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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A baked cake topped with a sweet lemon and apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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 large bowl, mix 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of milk, and 3 eggs until well combined.

  3. Add 3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon of baking soda. Mix until smooth.

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

Make the jelly and finish

  1. For the jelly, combine 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 1 grated apple, and 1 grated lemon in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Spread the hot jelly over the cake once it has cooled slightly.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Bind the batter and, in the jelly, thicken it as they cook.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps set the jelly into a glossy, spreadable texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing it and helping the baking soda react for lift.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma to the jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking the jelly until thickened. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can make them curdle or scramble. Stir constantly over moderate heat so the jelly thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, flour, cream, 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.

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