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Dessert

French Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, lemon peel, flour, rice, almonds, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

French 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

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

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately until well combined.

Make and bake the cake

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, lemon peel, flour, rice, sweet and bitter almonds, and orange flower water.

  2. Gradually add the beaten eggs to the mixture and beat well.

  3. Line a pan with parchment paper and pour the batter in.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped yolks and whites provide the structure and lift that make the cake light.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its set crumb.
Dried-ground rice
Adds a fine, tender texture to the crumb.
Sweet almonds
Contribute fat and moisture, giving a rich, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the mixture. Egg foams are fragile, and deflating them by overbeating or adding them too roughly loses the air that lifts the cake. Fold gently so the batter stays light through baking.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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