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Dessert

Prune Almond Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, milk, corn starch, flour, baking powder, egg whites, almond extract, prunes, and almonds, topped with boiled frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond 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 ↓

Prune 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.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk, corn starch, flour, baking powder, and egg whites; mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased dripping pan and bake until golden.

Fill and frost

  1. Once baked, cut the cake in half crosswise.

  2. Prepare enough boiled frosting for two layers.

  3. Fold the chopped prunes and almonds into the frosting.

  4. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fluffy batter.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Prunes
Add moisture, chewiness and natural sweetness to the frosting.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates the bubbles that help the cake rise and keep its texture light. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, so the mixture should look pale and fluffy before the other ingredients are added.

“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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