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Dessert

Genoise-cake

A sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, almonds, salt, fecula, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Genoise-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the sugar and eggs in a mixing bowl.

  2. Beat until frothy.

  3. Add salt, flour, fecula, pounded almonds, and butter. Mix well.

  4. Pour in the brandy and stir until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a small buttered and floured mold.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Whisked 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 crumb once baked.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped egg foam.
Almonds
Pounded into the batter, they add moisture, body and nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until frothy. The whipped egg foam is the only leavening in a genoise, so it must be beaten thoroughly to trap enough air. Under-beaten batter bakes flat and dense, while folding in the flour and butter gently helps keep that air from collapsing.

“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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