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Dessert

Nut Torte

A baked nut torte made with egg whites, sugar, hazelnuts, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 186 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nut Torte

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and mix

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the sifted sugar, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the grated hazelnuts and grated almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a springform pan.

  2. Bake for 40 minutes.

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. Hazelnut + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + hazelnuttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that traps air, giving the torte its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the torte and stabilizes the whipped whites, helping them hold their shape.
Grated hazelnuts
Add nutty flavor and body, giving the torte a tender, cake-like crumb.
Grated almonds
Add nutty aroma and moisture, contributing to a tender texture once baked.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap air; under-beaten or greasy whites collapse, and the torte rises less and turns dense.

Swap the hazelnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutthe original
  3. Brazil nutfits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, almond. 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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