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Dessert

Genoa Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, lemon rind, sultanas, cherries, and almonds.

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 almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 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 the batter

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

  2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Add the castor sugar and beat well.

  4. Stir in the well-beaten eggs, alternating with the milk or cream and sifted flour, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Add the cleaned fruit, chopped cherries, grated lemon rind, and shredded blanched almonds. Mix well and pour the batter into a cake tin lined with greased paper.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its starch sets during baking.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and gives the cake a rich, tender texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated crumb when beaten with butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sultanas or currants
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter until smooth and then adding sugar traps air in the fat, which gives the cake lift and a fine crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense result.

Swap the currant

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

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

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