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Dessert

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A baked almond cake made with sweet and bitter almonds, eggs, sugar, flour, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

For Desserts

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the almond base

  1. Bruise the sweet and bitter almonds very small in a mortar.

  2. Add the eggs and grind them with the almonds until fine.

  3. Mix in the sifted sugar until the mixture is the consistency of thick cream.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until they form a strong froth.

  2. Gently fold the almond mixture, flour, and grated lemon peel into the egg whites.

Bake

  1. Prepare your molds as for savoy shape cakes.

  2. Pour the mixture into the molds and bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and a tender, moist crumb.
Eggs
Bind the almond paste and add structure and richness to the cake.
Egg whites
Whisked to a froth, they lighten the batter and help the cake rise.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture.
Flour
Gives the folded batter enough structure to set as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Folding the almond mixture into the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whisked into the egg whites intact. Stirring or deflating the foam makes the cake dense and less light as it bakes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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