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Almond Cake

A sweet baked cake made with butter, milk, sugar, flour, corn starch, egg whites, baking powder, almonds, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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 gradually add the sweet milk.

  3. Mix in the confectioner's sugar, sifted flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, boil the 2 egg whites with the coffee until thick.

  2. Blanch and chop the almonds, then mix them into the frosting.

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

  4. Flavor with Royce's vanilla and top with whole blanched almonds if desired.

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 + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Confectioner's sugar
Sweetens the batter and contributes to a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Whites beaten to stiff peaks hold the air that lightens the cake. Stirring them in roughly or overmixing knocks out that air, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

“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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