Skip to main content
Dessert

Savoy Cake

Savoy cake is a light, lemon‑flavoured cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Savoy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a round-bottomed biscuit pan with the sugar.

  2. Set the pan in warm water and whisk briskly for 30 minutes until thick and warm.

  3. Remove from water and whisk until cold.

  4. Gently stir in the flour and flavor with lemon essence or lemon rind.

Prepare the mould

  1. Prepare the mould by melting butter, removing the scum, and brushing it into the mould.

  2. Dust the mould with a mixture of sugar and flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared mould and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Eggs
Whisked to foam, they trap air that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whisked egg foam.
Flour
Adds bulk and sets during baking to form the cake's crumb structure.
Butter
Greases the mould so the cake releases cleanly and browns lightly at the edges.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar over warm water. The eggs and sugar must whisk until thick and warm to build a stable foam. Under-whisking leaves the batter dense, while the foam's trapped air is what makes the cake rise. Folding the flour in gently preserves that air.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes