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Dessert

Lyonnaise Cake

A nutty almond cake with rum, custard filling, whipped cream, and claret sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lyonnaise Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Pound the almonds to a paste with the white of 1 egg.

  2. Mix in the rum and sugar, then add the yolks of the eggs one at a time, beating well.

  3. Gently fold in the sifted flour and the stiffly beaten whites of the 2 remaining eggs.

  4. Butter a dome-shaped mold and pour in the batter.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.

  2. Let cool, turn out of the mold, and cut crosswise into half-inch slices.

  3. Spread a good custard filling over each slice and replace the slices as they were originally.

Decorate and serve

  1. Decorate with whipped cream and serve with a claret sauce in a separate bowl.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + rumtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a paste, they give the cake its dense, moist, nutty body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter stay tender and browned.
Jamaica rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that lightens the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a dense, heavy cake.

“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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