Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 15,678 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Blanch a pound of sweet almonds and thirty bitter almonds, then pound them finely, adding the egg whites to the paste while pounding.
Transfer the almond paste to a bowl.
Add three quarters of a pound of sifted sugar, a little orange flower water, and three whole eggs to the bowl.
Mix the ingredients with a spatula or wooden spoon, beating them well together.
Add some grated lemon peel.
Add three yolks of eggs, beating well until the mixture is quite white.
Add the yolks of twelve eggs, beating the whites well, and continue beating the almonds to prevent them from falling.
When the egg whites are very firm, mix them into the cake mixture.
Bake and serve
Pour the batter into a buttered tin cake pan.
Bake in a very slow oven for three quarters of an hour.
Remove from the oven and let it cool before serving.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Almond + sugartop 10% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together15,678 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + eggtop 10% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together122,252 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Almond + eggtop 15% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together12,531 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Ground almonds form the body of the cake, giving it a rich, tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
- Eggs
- Whites trapped by beating lift the batter, while yolks add richness and set the structure.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until very firm before folding them in. Firmly beaten whites trap air that lifts the batter as it bakes. Under-beaten whites add little lift, and over-beaten whites turn grainy and collapse, leaving a dense cake.
Flavor stand-ins for the almond
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):
- Pecansabout as good a flavor fit
- Almondthe original
- Chestnutabout as good a flavor fit
- Milletabout as good a flavor fit
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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.
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