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Dessert

Savoy Cakes

Savoy Cakes are a lemon-flavored, sugar-sweetened cake made with egg yolks, egg whites, and flour, baked in buttered molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar with a wooden spoon for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and mix well.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and white.

  4. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter a little at a time.

  5. Sift the flour.

  6. Fold the sifted flour into the mixture until combined.

Prepare the molds and bake

  1. Brush the molds with clarified butter until smooth.

  2. Mix the fine sugar with the flour.

  3. Dust the molds with this mixture.

  4. Pour the batter into the prepared molds.

  5. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until golden brown.

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the cakes lift and an airy, light crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks whip to a stable, pale foam.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stirring or deflating the whipped whites removes the air that makes these cakes rise. Fold gently and add them in portions so the batter stays light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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