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Dessert

Cream Almond Cake

A layered cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, cream, and topped with almonds and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the cake

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

  2. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs with 1 cup granulated sugar and ½ cup confectioners' sugar until light.

  3. Add ½ eggshell of water and flavor with essence of coffee.

  4. Sift 1 cup of flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder and fold into the egg mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into two greased and floured cake pans.

  7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, heat ½ pint of cream, add sugar and vanilla to taste.

  2. Beat 2 eggs and add them to the cream before it boils, stirring occasionally until thick.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the filling between the layers and top with grated almonds and plain icing.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 yolks and stiff whites give the sponge its structure and lift.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that sets the crumb once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Cream
Enriches the filling with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
2 eggs
Thicken the cream filling as their proteins set during gentle heating.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the cream. If the cream boils or the eggs are added too hot, the egg proteins can scramble into lumps. Adding them before boiling and stirring gently lets the filling thicken smoothly.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, coffee, flour, cream, vanilla):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Cocoafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, coffee, flour, cream, 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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