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Dessert

Walnut Farina Cake

A cake made with walnut, farina, eggs, sugar, baking powder, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Walnut Farina Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs with ½ cup sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in ⅓ cup walnut meats, ½ cup Farina, and ½ teaspoon baking powder.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until fully incorporated.

  4. Beat the batter well and divide it into 2 layers.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden, then layer with whipped cream in between.

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

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

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

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 moisture while helping bind the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped into the batter to give the cake lift and an airy, light structure.
Farina
Provides the starchy body that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the layers rise.
Walnut meats
Add nutty flavor and a little texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites makes the layers dense and flat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Filbertfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, meat, cream. 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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