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Dessert

Layer Cake

A lemon-flavored layered cake with a sweet lemon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Layer Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and egg whites, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, bring 3 cups of water to a boil.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little water and add it to the boiling water.

  3. Stir in 1½ cups of sugar and the beaten eggs.

  4. Add the juice and rind of the lemons after it boils.

  5. Let the filling cool before using 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping stabilize the egg whites and react with the baking soda.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before using it between the cake layers. Starch-thickened fillings keep thickening as they cool and set. Spreading it while hot would make it runny and let it soak into or slide off the layers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, cream, 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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