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Dessert

Genoese Cake

A buttery cake with sultanas, mixed peel, pistachios, almonds, lemon rind, and coffee icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Genoese Cake

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. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, flour, sultanas, chopped mixed peel, and well-beaten eggs. Mix well for a few minutes.

  3. Add the blanched and chopped almonds and pistachio nuts, followed by the lemon rind and baking powder.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a buttered tin with buttered paper, extending it 2-3 inches above the tin.

  2. Pour in the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. Once the cake is completely cool, cover it with coffee icing.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the cake bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Sultanas
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the butter until creamy. Creaming softened butter with sugar traps air bubbles that expand in the oven and give the cake its lift. Under-creamed butter leads to a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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