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Dessert

Almond Cream Cake

A sweet cake made with powdered sugar, butter, flour, egg whites, blanched almonds, whipped cream, and almond extract.

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 ↓

Almond Cream 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. In a bowl, cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  3. Add the cold water and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  6. Flavor the batter with almond extract.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Fill and decorate

  1. For the filling, mix the chopped almonds with the whipped cream and sweeten with almond extract.

  2. Once the cake is cool, fill it with the almond cream mixture.

  3. Ice the top of the cake and decorate with whole almonds.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the batter lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps give a fine, even texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Blanched almonds
Chopped fine and folded into the cream filling, they add nutty flavor and body.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are stiff. Overmixing or deflating them when folding into the batter knocks out air, so the cake rises less and turns out denser.

“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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