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Dessert

Almond Cake, Plain

A sweet almond cake made with sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Cake, Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar.

  2. Grate the lemon rind into the loaf sugar and pound together with the almonds.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and the butter, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the fine flour into the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites until fully combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well‑buttered mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and rich nutty flavor of the cake.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter while whites, folded in, lighten its structure.
Fine flour
Forms the set structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps tenderize its crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for moistness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that makes the cake rise and turn light. Stirring them in too vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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