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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A baked cake with a lemon and orange jelly filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Jelly 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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour, milk, baking powder, and flavoring.

  5. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine sugar, lemon juice, orange juice, egg yolks, water, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in cold water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Boil the sugar and water mixture with grated lemon peel, then pour it over the other ingredients.

  4. Return to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring briskly.

Assemble

  1. Cool the filling and spread it between the cake layers.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the cake crumb and richness to the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling into a spreadable, sliceable jelly-like layer.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavor that balances the sugar in the filling.

The step that matters

Return the filling to the heat and bring it to a boil, stirring briskly. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny.

Swap the orange

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

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

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