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Dessert

Almond Nagout

A layered almond cake with a sweet almond and sour cream filling, finished with a lemon-flavored powdered sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Almond Nagout

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 cake layers

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

  2. Cream the butter and 1½ cups sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon extract. Mix well.

  4. Divide the batter into 4 layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling and frosting

  1. For the filling, combine the chopped almonds, sour cream, ½ cup sugar, and vanilla. Mix well.

  2. Spread the almond mixture between the baked layers.

  3. Frost the top and sides with beaten egg whites and ½ cup powdered sugar flavored with lemon.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the layers a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers as it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the layers.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the layers rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that works with baking soda to leaven the batter and stabilize whites.
Sweet almonds
Provide the nutty flavor and moist, chewy texture of the almond filling.

The step that matters

Baking the four layers until golden. Four thin layers bake faster than one thick cake, so they can dry out or over-brown quickly. Watching color and baking just until golden keeps the layers moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, cream, 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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