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Dessert

Almond Genoa Cake

A baked almond and citron cake with sherry, eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Genoa Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Skin and coarsely chop half of the almonds; mix with the chopped citron.

  3. Split the remaining almonds in half for decoration.

  4. Dredge the chopped almonds and citron with flour and warm slightly.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well for 5 minutes.

  3. Gently sift in the flour and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir in the almond and citron mixture gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tin lined with buttered paper.

  2. Evenly distribute the split almonds on top.

  3. Bake for 1 hour in a cool oven.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour 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
Whipped whites and yolks provide structure and lift, giving the cake its airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that sets the crumb once the cake is baked.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a pleasant chew, and decorate the top.
Citron
Adds fruity, aromatic flavour and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in roughly or sifting in flour too vigorously deflates the batter and produces a dense cake.

“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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