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Dessert

Lemon Honey Cake

A moist cake flavored with lemon zest and honey, layered with a lemon-honey glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Honey 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.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Sift together the corn starch, flour, and baking powder, then gradually add to the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the lemon honey

  1. For the Lemon Honey, melt the sugar, lemon juice, and butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Once dissolved, stir in the beaten eggs and cook, stirring rapidly, until thickened.

Assemble and store

  1. Spread the Lemon Honey between the layers of cake and store any leftovers in a covered container.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks and whole eggs thicken the lemon honey as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richness to both the cake and the lemon honey.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the cake a finer, more tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness of the honey.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the lemon honey while cooking. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat, but if they are added too fast or the mixture gets too hot they can scramble. Stirring rapidly keeps the eggs smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, corn, flour, 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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