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Dessert

Genoa Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, raisins, mixed peel, almonds, lemon rind, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and flour alternately, mixing in the baking powder.

  4. Stir in the mixed peel, sultana raisins, and grated lemon rind.

  5. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined cake tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. After about 30 minutes, place the sliced almonds on top of the cake.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 and moisture as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sultana raisins
Add moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and flour alternately. Adding eggs in small portions while alternating with flour keeps the batter emulsified. If the eggs are added too quickly, the batter can curdle, which may lead to a heavier, denser cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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