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Dessert

Almond Cake

A cake made from bitter and sweet almonds, sugar, eggs, flour, rose water, and lemon‑flavored icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Almond Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the bitter and sweet almonds.

  2. Lay the blanched almonds on a dry cloth in the sun to dry.

  3. Powder the loaf sugar.

  4. Sift the powdered sugar.

  5. Pound the dried almonds in a mortar to a smooth paste.

  6. Add a little rose water to the paste to prevent oiling.

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into the powdered sugar.

  2. Beat the mixture until very light.

  3. Stir the almond paste into the egg and sugar mixture vigorously.

  4. Gently fold in the flour.

Bake and ice

  1. Grease thin-bottomed pans with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pans.

  3. Place the mixture into the oven.

  4. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C).

  5. Mix the egg whites with powdered sugar to form a thick paste.

  6. Add lemon juice for flavor.

  7. Spread the icing on the warm cake.

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. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Beaten to a light foam, they give the cake its structure and lift.
Almonds
Ground into a paste, they supply the body, moisture and nutty flavor of the cake.
Flour
Gently folded in, it provides the starch that sets the crumb once baked.
Loaf sugar
Powdered and beaten with the eggs, it sweetens the batter and helps trap air.
Egg whites
Whisked with powdered sugar, they form a thick icing that sets smooth over the cake.

The step that matters

Stir the almond paste into the egg mixture vigorously. The beaten eggs hold air that gives the cake its rise. Adding the almond paste roughly can deflate that foam, and the rose water helps keep the paste from separating and oiling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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