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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A cake layered with lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Jelly 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 layers

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

  2. In a bowl, mix together sugar, flour, eggs, melted butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and milk until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into four greased cake pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Make the lemon jelly and assemble

  1. For the lemon jelly, combine water, eggs, sugar, corn starch, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Once the cakes are cool, spread the lemon jelly between the 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.

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. 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
Bind the batter and set the jelly, giving the cake structure and the filling body.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the lemon jelly, and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon jelly so it holds its shape between the layers.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the jelly its flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when heated enough with stirring, and the eggs can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly. Stirring keeps the starch and eggs evenly heated so the jelly sets smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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