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Dessert

Sunshine Cake

A light, airy lemon cake made with beaten egg whites and yolks, sugar, flour, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sunshine Cake

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sunshine Cake

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.

Prepare the egg whites

  1. Separate the eggs.

  2. Add salt to the egg whites and beat until foamy.

  3. Add lemon juice or cream of tartar, half a teaspoon at a time, and whip until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the sugar once and fold it into the egg whites until dissolved.

  2. Beat the yolks until stiff and fold them into the egg whites.

  3. Sift the flour five times, measure, and fold it into the egg mixture lightly.

Bake

  1. Bake in an ungreased tube pan at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the cake.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so they hold their stiff peaks.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the foam while dissolving into the whites.

The step that matters

Folding the flour into the egg mixture. Flour must be folded in lightly so the air trapped in the whipped whites is not deflated. Overmixing knocks out air, leaving a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, 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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