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Dessert

Savoy Cake

A light, airy cake made with eggs, sugar, lemon essence, and greased with mutton suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Savoy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Grease the moulds with melted mutton suet and drain well.

  3. Dredge the moulds thoroughly with sifted loaf sugar.

Make and bake the batter

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the yolks with a pinch of salt and sugar until very light.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to firm peaks and gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

  4. Add lemon essence or other flavoring.

  5. Pour the batter into the prepared moulds.

  6. Bake until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + muttontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + muttontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Whipped whites and beaten yolks provide the structure and lift that make the cake light.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the beaten yolks become light and thick.

The step that matters

Folding the whites into the yolk mixture. Whisked whites hold air that gives the cake its rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the batter leaves a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Pumpkinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, mutton. 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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