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Dessert

Lunch Cake

A quick baked cake made with flour, baking powder, butter or lard, sugar, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Lunch Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lunch Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot 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).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the castor sugar and desired flavorings.

  2. Quickly mix in the beaten eggs and milk.

  3. Pour the batter into buttered tins.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Fine flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins and starch set on baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.

The step that matters

Quickly mix in the beaten eggs and milk.. Once liquid meets flour, gluten starts to develop; overmixing makes the cake tough, and delaying the mix lets the baking powder lose its lift before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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