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Dessert

Lemon Cakes, or King Henry's Shoe Strings

A light lemon cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, orange‑flower water, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cakes, or King Henry's Shoe Strings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs well.

  2. Add ¾ pound sifted sugar, grated lemon rind, and 2 tablespoons orange‑flower water; mix well.

  3. Slowly add 6 ounces of flour, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and the juice of 1 lemon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into ladyfinger tins or a large pan, spreading it very thin.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300 °F (150 °C) for 1 hour.

  3. Cut into strips.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped stiff, they trap air and give the cakes a light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten well with sugar, they add richness and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cakes together as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps create a tender crumb.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lightens the cakes. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing before the batter reaches the oven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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