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Dessert

Walnut Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, cracker meal, walnuts, baking powder, lemon juice, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut 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. Beat the egg yolks very lightly with the powdered sugar.

  2. Add the cracker meal, grated walnuts, baking powder, and lemon juice.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cake its light, airy structure, while the yolks add richness.
Grated walnuts
Provide the main body and nutty flavor, and add moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Cracker meal
Adds a little dry starch to help bind the batter with the ground nuts.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and stay light.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the beaten yolks.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring or folding roughly deflates them, leaving a dense cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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