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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon cake with a lemon jelly filling.

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

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 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the egg yolks to the butter mixture and mix well.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk.

  7. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently until just combined.

Bake and make the jelly

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

  2. For the jelly, beat together the butter, sugar, and eggs in a bowl.

  3. Set the bowl in a dish of hot water and stir until heated through.

  4. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, stirring until thick and smooth.

  5. While the cake is warm, spread layers of jelly between the cake 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.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Whites trapped by beating and folding give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's structure.
Sugar
Creamed with butter it helps trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilising the egg whites and supporting the rise with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously or too long knocks out the air, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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