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Dessert

Cake, Yorkshire Sandwich

A sweet cake sandwich made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and jam or lemon curd.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Cake, Yorkshire Sandwich

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat in the eggs alternately with the self-raising flour.

  3. Pour the batter into two sandwich tins lined with buttered paper.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, spread jam or lemon curd on one layer.

  3. Place the other layer on top.

  4. Sprinkle with castor sugar before serving.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the sponge layers.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries air when creamed with sugar.
Self-raising flour
Provides the main structure of the cake, set by heat as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Ground rice
Gives the sponge a finer, slightly crumbly texture.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air that helps the cake rise and gives it an even crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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