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Dessert

Lemon Sponge Cream Layer Cake

A sponge cake with lemon‑flavored sponge and lemon cream, topped with orange icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Sponge Cream Layer 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 sponge

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

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Add powdered sugar and beat well.

  4. Add beaten yolks, lemon juice, and rind, then beat again.

  5. Carefully stir in sifted flour without beating.

  6. Pour the batter into deep pans or layer pans.

  7. Bake until done.

Make the lemon cream

  1. Combine boiling water, butter, and cornstarch dissolved in a little cold water in a kettle.

  2. Boil until thick.

  3. Add granulated sugar, lemon juice, and beaten yolks.

  4. Boil until thick again.

  5. Let the Lemon Cream cool.

Assemble and ice

  1. Spread the Lemon Cream between the layers of cake.

  2. Mix orange juice and rind with powdered sugar until thick enough to spread. Dip a knife in cold water.

  3. Spread the icing on 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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Whipped whites and beaten yolks trap air and set the structure of the sponge.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, with the eggs, helps give the cake its tender crumb.
Sifted flour
Provides the starch that sets the cake's structure as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon cream as it boils.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the lemon cream and helps give it body.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour without beating. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Beating the flour in would deflate the batter and make the sponge dense instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, lemon, cream, butter, walnut. 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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