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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with a lemon filling made from lemon juice, zest, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Lemon 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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the egg whites into the batter gently.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve the cornstarch in a little water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, lemon zest, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and boiling water.

  3. Cook over a double boiler until thickened, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks give the batter lift and an airy, light crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour in both cake and filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the lemon flavour of the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, spoonable set.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling with constant stirring. Cornstarch thickens only when heated while stirred, and the egg yolks can scramble or curdle if the mixture gets too hot. Stirring constantly over a double boiler spreads heat gently, prevents lumps and scorching, and gives a smooth, evenly thickened filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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