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Dessert

Gold Cake

A buttery, lemon-flavored cake made with butter, sugar, flour, salt, cream of tartar, lemon rind and juice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Gold Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, lemon rind, and juice, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into baking sheets about 2 inches deep.

  2. Bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat coating the flour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, helps tenderize it, and aids browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture, and emulsifying power that binds the batter.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that reacts with the saleratus to help the cake rise.
Saleratus
Acts as a leavening agent that releases gas to lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, so overmixing makes the cake tough. Leavening also starts reacting on contact, so the batter should go into the oven without delay.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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