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Dessert

White Nut Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with walnuts, almond extract, and a sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Nut Cake

Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Nut Cake

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the broken walnut meats and almond extract.

  7. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg white until frothy, then gradually add the sugar and beat until stiff.

  3. Frost the cooled cake and place whole halves of walnuts on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the batter and gives a light structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and turn airy.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and nutty flavor, and their oils contribute richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter for a fine texture and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are stiff. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring hard deflates it and the cake bakes up dense.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour, meat, 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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