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Dessert

Savoy Cake, or Sponge Cake in a Mould

A light sponge cake flavored with lemon and orange‑flower water, baked in a mould.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Savoy Cake, or Sponge Cake in a Mould

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Ensure the mould is completely dry and grease it with butter.

  3. Dust the inside of the mould with pounded sugar, shaking out the excess.

  4. Tie a strip of paper around the mould.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  2. Gently fold in the flour, grated lemon, and orange-flower water.

  3. Fill the mould three-quarters full with the batter.

  4. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven.

  5. Let the cake stand for a few minutes before gently shaking it out of the mould.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with eggs, helps build a stable foam.
All-purpose flour
Sets during baking to give the cake its structure once the egg foam firms.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the flour. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs and sugar. Stirring vigorously knocks out that air, so the cake bakes up dense rather than light and airy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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