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Dessert

French Cake

A French cake made with flour, ground rice, sugar, lemon rind, sweet and bitter almonds, orange-flower water, and eggs.

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. In a bowl, mix the flour and ground rice.

  3. Add the sugar, lemon rind, sweet and bitter almonds, and orange-flower water.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

Bake

  1. Combine the beaten eggs with the other ingredients until well blended.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking pan and 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
Provide structure and lift when beaten and folded into the batter, setting the cake as it bakes.
Fine flour
Forms the starch framework that gives the cake its body and crumb.
Ground rice
Adds a tender, slightly sandy crumb while contributing to the cake's structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its crumb and browning.
Sweet almonds
Contribute fat and flavor, adding moisture and richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs separately. Yolks and whites are beaten separately so the whites can be whipped to air, which gives the batter lift. Whites must be beaten gently and folded in, because overmixing collapses the foam and leaves a dense cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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