French · Savoy · dessert

Gâteau de Savoie

Gâteau de Savoie reads sweetness 7.5, citrus 6.4 and sourness 6.0 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a French · Savoy dessert, about 1 hr 51 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Sweetness 7.5 · Citrus 6.4 · Sourness 6.0 · Fruity 5.3 · Richness 4.5 · Floral 2.9 · Salinity 2.4 · Umami 1.6

What's in it (10)

Time & effort: about 1 hr 51 min (1 hr 11 min active) · effort: medium

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 248.8 kcal, 6 g protein, 7.1 g fat, 41.5 g carbs

Dietary: Vegetarian · Contains dairy · Contains egg — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (8 steps)

  1. This cake contains no baking powder, no butter in the batter and no liquid, which means the entire rise comes from air you beat into eggs. It is the oldest kind of sponge and it is a technique exercise: get the two foams right and it works every time, get them wrong and nothing will save it. Savoie tells a story about it being made for Charles IV in the fourteenth century, which is charming and unverifiable.
  2. Butter a 22 cm fluted Savoie mould or a plain deep tin very thoroughly, working the butter into every groove with a brush, then tip in the 2 tablespoons of sugar and roll it round to coat before knocking out the excess. Sugar, not flour: it gives the crisp, faintly caramelised shell the cake is known for and helps it release cleanly.
  3. Whisk the yolks with 140 g of the sugar, the lemon zest and the orange-flower water for a full 8 minutes, until the mixture is pale straw-coloured, has trebled in volume and falls from the whisk in a ribbon that sits on the surface for about 3 seconds before sinking. Anything less and the crumb will be dense.
  4. Sift the potato starch and flour together twice. The starch is not a substitute for flour — it is there because it has no gluten, and it gives the drier, lighter, faintly powdery crumb that distinguishes a gâteau de Savoie from a Genoise.
  5. Whisk the whites with the salt to soft peaks, then rain in the remaining 40 g of sugar and whisk to a glossy meringue that holds a peak which bends over at the tip. Do not take them to stiff and dry: dry whites break into lumps when folded and leave white streaks in the baked cake.
  6. Fold a third of the whites into the yolk mixture to slacken it, then fold in half the sifted starch and flour, then another third of the whites, then the rest of the flour, then the last of the whites. Use a large spatula, cutting down through the middle, along the bottom and up the side, turning the bowl a quarter turn each time. Stop the moment it is uniform — every extra stroke costs volume.
  7. Pour it into the mould, no more than two-thirds full, and level the top gently. Bake at 160°C (325°F) for 45 minutes, without opening the door for the first 35 minutes. It is done when it is deep gold, has shrunk slightly from the sides and a skewer comes out clean.
  8. Let it settle 10 minutes, then turn it out and cool it on a rack. Dust with icing sugar. It is deliberately plain and dry — eaten with a glass of sweet wine, with poached fruit, or split and layered with cream in the towns.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.