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Dessert

Plain Almond Cake

A light almond cake made with sugar, egg yolks, almonds, bread crumbs, lemon rind, vanilla, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla 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 ↓

Plain Almond Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until very light.

  2. Add the chopped almonds, bread crumbs, lemon rind, and vanilla.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into a tin.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the tin into the Caloric and use both hot stones.

  2. Bake for 1¼ hours.

  3. Once cold, spread icing on top or sprinkle sugar over it.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness, and help bind the batter with the sugar.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and airy structure.
Almonds
Provide the main body, nutty flavour and a moist, dense crumb.
Bread crumbs
Add a little structure and absorb moisture so the cake holds together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip to a light, pale mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser cake with less rise.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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