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Dessert

Genoa Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, sultanas, almonds, and eggs, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Genoa Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Genoa 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 the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the sultanas and half of the chopped almonds to the mixture.

  3. Mix the two flours together, ensuring there are no lumps.

  4. Break one egg at a time into the sugar mixture, adding a handful of flour with each egg, and beat well.

  5. Continue beating until all the eggs and flour are incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered cake tin lined with buttered paper.

  2. Decorate the top with the remaining almonds and bake for 1.5 hours in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and browning.
Sultanas
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the creamed mixture. Eggs added too quickly can curdle the creamed butter and sugar, causing the batter to separate and lose air. Adding one egg at a time with a spoonful of flour, and beating well between additions, keeps the emulsion stable so the cake rises evenly.

“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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