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Dessert

Genoa Cake

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

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

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

  2. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  3. Add the sugar and beat well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs alternately with the flour mixed with baking powder to the butter mixture.

  2. Stir in the finely chopped mixed peel, sultanas, and grated lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tin lined with greased paper.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours.

  3. After 1 hour, slice the almonds and lay them 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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set by the eggs.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.
Sultanas
Add moisture and sweetness, becoming plump as they bake.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps aerate the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs alternately with the flour. Adding eggs in portions with the flour keeps the emulsion stable. If the eggs go in all at once, the batter can curdle and bake up heavy and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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