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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon cake with a cornstarch‑based filling made from boiled water, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lemon Cake

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Crack the eggs into a cup and add the rich sweet cream.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl, add sugar, flour, and baking powder, and beat thoroughly.

  3. Pour the batter into two pie pans and bake.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix cornstarch with a little cold water.

  2. In boiling water, add the cornstarch mixture, sugar, and butter the size of a walnut; boil until clear.

  3. Add the egg yolks and lemon juice, then boil for a few minutes.

Assemble

  1. When the cakes are almost cool, split them with a broad-bladed knife.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling as it boils, giving it a smooth, set body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling as they cook, adding richness and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the filling its bright, tart flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken only when heated enough to set their proteins, but they can curdle if boiled too hard or too long. Keep the filling at a steady boil for just a few minutes, stirring, so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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