Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Lemon 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.
Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and cold water; mix until smooth.
Pour the batter into layer pans and bake until golden.
Make the lemon cream
For the lemon cream, combine the grated lemon, lemon juice, sugar, and water in a saucepan.
Beat the mixture together, then heat on the stove until it boils.
Assemble
Spread the lemon cream between the baked cake layers.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Beaten with sugar, they trap air and add structure and moisture to the cake.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that stabilizes the egg foam and reacts with baking soda.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
- Lemon
- Supplies acidity and bright aroma to the cream filling.
The step that matters
Mix the batter until just smooth. Overmixing develops too much gluten, making the cake tough. Baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting once moistened, so the batter should go into the pans promptly to rise well.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream. 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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