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Dessert

Lemon Cakes

A light cake made with egg whites, butter, powdered sugar, lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lemon Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites with the flower water for 1 hour using a whisk.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and grated lemon rind, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and smooth egg yolks.

  4. Just before baking, mix in the softened butter.

Bake

  1. Butter a pan and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, giving the cake its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the crumb as the cake bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the whipped whites.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites for a full hour. Whipped egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Beating them thoroughly builds a stable foam, and under-whipping leaves a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

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