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Dessert

Savoy Cake

A light, airy cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, lemon rind or almond essence, baked in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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

  1. Weigh 4 eggs and use the same weight in pounded loaf sugar.

  2. Weigh 7 eggs and use the same weight in flour.

  3. Break the eggs, placing yolks in one bowl and whites in another.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the yolks.

  2. Mix in the sugar and grated lemon rind or flavoring.

  3. Beat well.

  4. Add the whisked egg whites.

  5. Mix until frothy.

  6. Gradually add the flour.

  7. Continue to beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Butter a mold and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Whisked whites trap air and, when baked, set into the cake's light structure.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the whisked yolks and whites hold a stable foam.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and protein that set into the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour. Beaten egg foam is delicate. Adding flour slowly and mixing gently keeps the air in the batter, while overmixing deflates it and can toughen the crumb as gluten develops.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, 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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