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Dessert

Diet Cake

A cake made with flour, almonds, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon oil, and water, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Diet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the sugar in just under 1 pint of water until it reaches 250°F (120°C).

  2. Stir in the butter until melted.

  3. Pour the sugar mixture onto the well-beaten eggs and continue beating until the mixture is cold.

  4. Add the flour and chopped almonds, mixing until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a deep cake pan lined with paper.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs give the cake structure and lift as they trap air.
Flour
Sets the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Almonds
Add body, texture and a nutty flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot sugar syrup onto the eggs. Hot syrup poured in too quickly or onto unbeaten eggs can cook the eggs unevenly and leave lumps. Pour it slowly while beating so the eggs stay smooth and airy as the mixture cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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