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Dessert

Citron Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, and chopped citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Citron Cake

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 ↓

Citron 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

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

  3. Add the egg yolks and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites and the chopped citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into long, narrow pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Whites beaten separately and folded in add lightness and help the cake rise and hold its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine-textured crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Citron
Chopped citron rolled in flour adds candied fruit flavor and chewy pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air from beating. Stirring them in too hard deflates that air, so the cake bakes up denser and less light.

“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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