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Dessert

Portugal Cake

A fruit and almond cake made with powdered sugar, flour, butter, mixed fruit, almonds, lemon juice or wine, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Portugal 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).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar together until smooth and light.

  2. Add the egg yolks and beat until well mixed and light.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter alternately with the flour.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Reserve ½ cup of flour to coat the fruit.

  2. Stir in the fruit and blanched, shredded almonds.

  3. Pour the batter into paper-lined pans.

  4. Bake until golden.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, when beaten with butter, a light, smooth texture.
Butter
Provides fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and structure, while yolks add richness and binding.
Flour
Builds the cake's structure once it is folded into the batter.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavor and a chewy, textured crumb.
Mixed fruit
Adds sweetness, moisture and chewy pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Folding gently with alternating flour keeps the air whipped into the whites. Stirring hard would deflate them, leaving a denser cake with less lift.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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