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Dessert

Spongecake, Almond, Superior

A light almond sponge cake made with blanched almonds, eggs, lemon rind, powdered sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Spongecake, Almond, Superior

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 the almond base

  1. Blanch the almonds, then place them in cold water. Dry them well and pound smoothly, adding 3 eggs gradually.

  2. Mix in the grated lemon rind, powdered sugar, and the well-beaten yolks of 15 eggs.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the remaining egg whites to a firm froth and gently fold them into the almond mixture.

  2. Sift in the flour and beat the batter briskly for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and sift powdered sugar into it. Pour the batter in until it is half full.

  2. Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Let the cake stand for a few minutes, then carefully turn it out onto a sieve.

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 + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the cake, forming its dense base.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves into the batter for a fine, even crumb.
All-purpose flour
Adds a small amount of starch to give the sponge structure so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be whipped to a firm froth and folded in gently. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the cake loses the air that lifts it in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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