Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Cake

A cake made with almond meal, raisins, and an almond butter icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Oil a bake tin.

  2. Mix almond meal and powdered sugar together.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately until stiff.

Make the cake batter

  1. Fold the yolks and whites together, then fold in the almond meal and sugar.

  2. Wash the raisins, powder them with flour, and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Fold in the all-purpose flour last.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, mix sifted powdered sugar, egg whites, and almond butter until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the cake dough, spreading a thin layer of icing between layers.

  2. Finish with the cake on top.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Eggs
Whipped yolks and whites trap air, giving the cake its light, risen structure.
Almond meal
Adds nutty flavour and moisture, and gives body without wheat gluten.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten network that gives the cake firmer structure when folded in last.
Rice flour
Supplies starch for structure with a fine, tender crumb and little chewiness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves finely, helping produce a tender crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness, and their flour coating helps keep them spread through the batter.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped eggs and almond meal. Stiffly beaten egg whites hold the air that makes the cake rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and leaves the batter light.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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

More almond cake recipes

Coconut 13Filling 7Jordan 7Lemon 7Currant 6French 5 See all 358 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes