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Dessert

Savoy Cake

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, cornflour, vanilla, and baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Savoy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Place the whites in a cool bowl until needed.

  3. Grease a mould with butter and dust it with finely powdered sugar.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, mix the yolks with the sugar, salt, and vanilla essence until creamy.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Gently fold the stiff egg whites into the yolk mixture.

  4. Gradually mix in the flour and cornflour until fully incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared mould.

  2. Tie a band of paper around it.

  3. Place the mould on a baking sheet with wood ashes.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 30 minutes or until done.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Finest flour
Provides the main structure once set by heat.
Cornflour
Makes the crumb more tender and lighter than flour alone.

The step that matters

Folding the stiff egg whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake with less rise.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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

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