Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A baked cake with a lemon-flavored jelly filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Jelly Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, milk, butter, flour, and baking powder until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup of sugar, walnut-sized butter, and 4 tablespoons of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated rind and juice of 2 lemons, stir, and cook over low heat until thickened.

  3. Once the cake is cool, spread the lemon filling between the layers.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and help the cake batter rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richness to the cake and filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise light and airy.
Lemons
Rind and juice give the filling its bright acidity and aroma.

The step that matters

Cook the lemon filling over low heat until thickened. Gentle heat lets the sugar, water and lemon juice thicken slowly without scorching or curdling. Overheating can burn the sugar or cause the filling to break down rather than set smoothly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, butter, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More lemon jelly cake recipes

Apple 3 See all 63 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes