Skip to main content
Dessert

Kwarezimal

A Maltese almond cake made with blanched almonds, flour, sugar, cinnamon, citrus rinds, and orange flower water.

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and tangerine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 24 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven190°C/375°F/gas 5
Timeabout 20 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Lightly toast the almonds and grind them coarsely.

  2. Mix the ground almonds with the flour, sugar, cinnamon, citrus rinds, and a little orange flower water.

  3. Add just enough water to make a stiff dough.

  4. Knead lightly until well amalgamated and shape into ovals, approximately 17.5 cm long, 5 cm wide and 2 cm thick.

Bake

  1. Place on greased and floured baking trays and bake at 190°C/375°F/gas 5 for about 20 minutes.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cinnamon + tangerinetop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Orange + tangerinetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cake.
Plain flour
Gives the dough structure so the ovals hold their shape while baking.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Honey
Adds moisture and sweetness, helping the cake stay tender.

The step that matters

Adding just enough water to the dough. A stiff dough holds its shape in the oven. Too much water makes the mixture slack and spreading, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to bind.

Flavor stand-ins for the tangerine

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

  1. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Blueberrybetter flavor fit
  4. Tangerinethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, flour, sugar, cinnamon, orange, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like