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Dessert

A Chantilly Cake

A dessert made from a savoy cake filled with custard, soaked in white wine, topped with whipped cream and almond slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,760 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

A Chantilly Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut a hole in the top of the savoy cake.

  2. Remove some of the inside.

  3. Stick the cake with slices of sweet almonds.

  4. Pour 2 cups of white wine over the cake.

  5. Let it soak.

Fill and top

  1. Fill the hole with custard.

  2. Add some custard around the bottom.

  3. Top with whipped cream.

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. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Almond + white winetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Savoy cake
Provides a light, porous base that soaks up the wine and holds the filling.
White wine
Moistens the sponge and adds a light acidity and aroma.
Sweet almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft cake.
Custard
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture inside the cake.
Whipped cream
Adds light, airy richness and a cool, soft topping.

The step that matters

Let it soak. The cake needs time for the wine to be absorbed evenly. Pouring too quickly can leave the surface soggy and the centre dry, so the wine should soak in gradually before filling.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, 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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