Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Savoy 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.
Prepare
Weigh 4 eggs and use the same weight in pounded loaf sugar.
Weigh 7 eggs and use the same weight in flour.
Break the eggs, placing yolks in one bowl and whites in another.
Make the batter
Whisk the yolks and mix in the sugar and grated lemon rind or flavoring.
Beat the mixture well and add the whisked egg whites.
Gradually fold in the flour while continuing to beat for 15 minutes.
Bake
Butter a mold, pour in the batter, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Whisked whites trap air that lifts the cake, while yolks add richness and structure.
- Pounded loaf sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whisked egg foam.
- All-purpose flour
- Its proteins and starches set during baking to give the cake its structure.
The step that matters
Folding in the flour. The batter depends on the air whisked into the eggs for its rise. Adding flour gradually and folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard or dumping the flour in at once knocks it out and leaves a dense cake.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. 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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