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Dessert

Genoese Pastry

A sweet pastry made with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, orange rind, topped with marmalade and orange icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 Pastry

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Melt the butter without heating it too much.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whip the eggs and sugar until stiff froth forms.

  2. Add the melted butter and flour alternately to the egg mixture, stirring gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold lined with oiled paper.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cover with marmalade and then with orange icing.

  3. Cut into fingers and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 to a stiff froth, they trap air and give the pastry its light structure.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb when melted and folded in.
All-purpose flour
Sets the structure of the crumb as the batter bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Orange rind
Adds aromatic citrus flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the butter and flour. Adding the melted butter and flour alternately and stirring gently keeps the whipped egg foam from collapsing. Overmixing knocks out the trapped air, which leads to a dense, heavy pastry.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour. 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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