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Dessert

Almond Cakes

A sweet almond cake made with blanched almonds, sugar, lemon rind, flour, butter, eggs, and optional icing or preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Frances Crawford · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Almond Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch seven ounces of sweet almonds and one ounce of bitter almonds, then dry them in a cool oven.

  2. Pound the blanched almonds into a paste with some orange‑flower water.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Mix the almond paste with a pound of flour and half a pound of butter.

  2. Add eight ounces of sifted sugar with grated lemon rind, and make a paste with egg yolks. Add four eggs.

  3. Shape the dough into small cakes.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the cakes on buttered tins in a slow oven until firm, crisp, and a nice brown.

  2. While hot, cover the cakes with a tin plate and place a slight weight on them.

  3. When cooled, serve the cakes as is, or spread rich preserve on each and arrange them in a pyramid.

  4. Optionally, form some cakes into balls, flatten them, coat with egg, sprinkle nonpareil confetti, coarse sugar, or sugar candy, and bake again as before.

  5. When baked, decorate the cakes with white or colored icing as desired.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

523Calories
14 gProtein
2 gFat
112 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Frances Crawford. 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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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 nutty flavour and the bulk of the paste that gives the cakes their body.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the shaped cakes hold their form while baking.
Butter (in the method)
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown and crisp as they bake.
Eggs (in the method)
Bind the dough together and add richness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake the cakes in a slow oven until firm and brown. A slow oven dries and sets the cakes evenly without scorching the outside. Taking them out at the right point keeps them crisp rather than soft or burnt.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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