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Dessert

Almond Nagout

A layered almond cake with a sweet almond filling and frosted with beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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.

Make the cake layers

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

  2. Cream the butter and 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

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

  2. Spread the almond mixture between the baked layers.

Frost and serve

  1. Frost the top and sides with the beaten egg whites and powdered sugar mixture.

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 give the cake a tender, fine crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to help the layers rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with baking soda to lighten the batter.
Sweet almonds
Give the filling body, texture and a nutty flavor.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang to the almond filling.

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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