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Dessert

Almond Cake

A baked almond cake made with sweet and bitter almonds, syrup, lemon juice, eggs, wine, sugar, flour, butter, and optional lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Almond 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 the batter

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Add syrup, lemon juice, egg white, and sweet wine to prevent oiling.

  3. Gradually mix in beaten eggs, then powdered sugar, and sifted flour.

  4. Slowly incorporate softened butter until well combined.

  5. Optionally, add grated lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

Almonds
Provide the main nutty flavour and a moist, dense crumb in the cake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the cake as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness, richness and a fine, soft texture.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to its tender crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the butter slowly. Butter added too quickly to the batter can separate and make it look oily or curdled. Adding it gradually, with the batter well mixed, keeps the emulsion stable so the cake bakes evenly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, syrup, egg, wine, sugar, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, syrup, egg, wine, 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.

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