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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A cake with a lemon and apple jelly filling baked in a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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. Cream the butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and the separated egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  6. 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 finish

  1. For the filling, cook the grated lemon, grated apples, beaten egg, and sugar in a double boiler until clear.

  2. Allow the filling to cool, then spread it on the cooled cake.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Egg yolks add richness and structure, while whipped whites lighten the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once the batter is set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Apples
Grated apples add moisture and tartness to the filling.
Lemon
Grated lemon adds aroma and acidity to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling in a double boiler until clear. Gentle indirect heat cooks the egg gently so it thickens smoothly without curdling or scrambling. Overheating causes the egg to set into lumps.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

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