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Dessert

Genoese Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, eggs, sugar, and butter, baked in a shallow tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Genoese Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift 5 ounces of flour through a fine sieve.

  2. Line a shallow baking tin with double paper and butter it well.

Make the batter

  1. Beat 6 eggs well, gradually adding 7 ounces of castor sugar while the bowl is in hot water.

  2. Add 5 ounces of melted butter and mix lightly but thoroughly with the flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°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.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Whipped with sugar, they trap air that gives the cake its light, sponge-like structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and stabilises the whisked eggs, helping them hold their air.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb, and carries flavour through the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar over hot water. Warming the eggs and sugar lets the sugar dissolve and the foam reach full volume, which the cake's airy structure depends on. Under-whisking leads to a dense result.

“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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