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Dessert

Portugal Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, flour, butter, egg whites, rose water, raisins, nutmeg, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Portugal 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. Blanch and grate the almonds or pound them in a mortar.

  3. Roll the almonds in a portion of the flour.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg whites and rose water, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the flour, nutmeg extract, raisins, and the prepared almonds just before baking.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

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 + raisintop 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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Provide structure and moisture as they set during baking, lifting the cake.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Almonds
Add fat, texture and nutty flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour, nutmeg extract, raisins, and the prepared almonds just before baking.. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form, and overmixing makes the cake tough and dense. Mixing gently and only until combined keeps the crumb light. Rolling the almonds in flour helps them stay spread through the batter rather than sinking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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