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Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

A lemon cake with chocolate icing, made from eggs, flour, sugar, and apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apricot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,098 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Add the yolks and quickly dredge in the flour while beating the mixture with an egg beater.

  3. Pour the batter into a well-buttered round cake tin.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Make the icing

  1. To make the chocolate icing, boil the sugar in a little water.

  2. Add the cocoa to the sugar mixture and let it cool.

  3. Beat the egg whites and mix them with the cooled sugar and cocoa.

Fill and finish

  1. When cold, cut the cake in half and spread with apricot jam or marmalade.

  2. Spread the icing on top of the cake.

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 + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 a stiff froth, they trap air that lifts the cake.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled, forms the base of the icing.
Cocoa
Gives the icing its chocolate flavour and dark colour.

The step that matters

Add the yolks and quickly dredge in the flour. Whipped egg whites hold air that lifts the cake. Adding flour slowly or over-beating knocks that air out, so the batter bakes up dense and flat.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, flour, apricot, sugar. 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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