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Dessert

Savoy Cake

Savoy Cake is a baked dessert made from egg yolks, powdered sugar, flour, corn starch, vanilla, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Savoy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with powdered sugar until slightly thickened.

  2. Add flour, corn starch, and vanilla extract; mix well.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and sprinkle it with sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold and bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) until a knife comes out clean.

  3. Let the cake cool before turning it out of the mold and serving.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help set the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen batter together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a more tender texture than flour alone.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks thicken when beaten.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites. Stirring instead of folding deflates the whites and loses the air that makes the cake rise and stay light. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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