Name: Almond Pound Cake
Ingredients: ¾ pound sweet almonds, blanched and finely chopped; 2 ounces bitter almonds, blanched and pounded to a paste; rose water, to taste

Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Pound Cake

Ingredients

¾ pound sweet almonds, blanched and finely chopped
2 ounces bitter almonds, blanched and pounded to a paste
rose water, to taste

Directions

Prepare a pound cake batter as usual.
Add the chopped sweet almonds to the batter.
Mix the pounded bitter almonds with a little rose water and incorporate it into the batter.
Bake according to pound cake instructions.

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.

Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,465 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds: Add body, nutty flavor and a tender, moist texture to the crumb.
Bitter almonds: Add a strong, aromatic almond flavor that is concentrated in small amounts.

“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.