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Dessert

A Small Fine Almond Cake

A small almond cake made with powdered sugar, eggs, almonds, and flour, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Small Fine Almond Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine powdered sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Pound the almonds very fine with 1 or 2 egg whites in a mortar.

  3. Mix the almond paste with the yolk and sugar mixture.

  4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff in a copper pan.

  5. Gently fold the yolk mixture into the whipped egg whites.

  6. Sift the flour into the mixture and fold gently.

Bake

  1. Prepare a baking pan by lining it with 3 layers of parchment paper inside and 4 layers at the bottom.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Dust the top of the batter with powdered sugar before baking.

  4. If the top browns too quickly, cover it with 1 or 2 sheets of paper.

  5. Bake for about 30 minutes.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cake its light, airy structure, while yolks add richness.
Almonds
Finely ground almonds form the body and tender, moist crumb of the cake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, even texture when combined with the eggs.
Flour
A small amount provides just enough structure to hold the light batter together.

The step that matters

Folding the yolk mixture into the whipped whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or deflating them causes the batter to lose volume and bake up dense.

“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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