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Dessert

Card Cakes

A cake made with butter, powdered sugar, eggs, flour, salt, almonds, cocoa, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and shredded coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Card Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and spread

  1. Cream the butter, add sugar, eggs well beaten, flour, and salt.

  2. Spread mixture on bottom of a buttered inverted dripping-pan.

  3. Decorate with almonds blanched and cut in strips.

Bake and cut

  1. Bake in slow oven.

  2. Cut in desired shape, using heart, spade, and diamond-shaped cutters before removing from pan.

Add the topping

  1. Divide mixture in halves.

  2. Add sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and vanilla to one-half of the mixture and spread on pan.

  3. Sprinkle with shredded coconut.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

864Calories
21 gProtein
27 gFat
128 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Well beaten, they add structure and bind the mixture together.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cut shapes together after baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Cocoa
Gives the second half its chocolate flavour and dark colour.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, almond, cinnamon, vanilla. 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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