Skip to main content
Dessert

Nut Cake

A sweet cake made with nuts, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and topped with meringue and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Nut Cake

Why it works: Nuts and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and 2 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

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

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden brown.

  2. Once cool, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar to the egg whites and continue beating until glossy.

  4. Spread the meringue over the cooled cake.

  5. Dip the nuts in a little raw egg and layer them on top of the cake.

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. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set during baking, binding the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that gives the frosting its glossy, airy body.
Nuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and then sugar is added gradually; under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold their shape and the meringue can weep or collapse.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

More nut cake recipes

Hickory 164Chocolate 6Cocoa 6Sour Cream 5White 5Macaroons 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes