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Dessert

Almond Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, flour, rose water, bitter almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 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 batter

  1. Separate the egg yolks and whites. Beat the yolks until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and pounded almonds mixed with rose water to the yolks. Mix well.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to a dry froth.

Fold and bake

  1. Gently fold in half of the egg whites and half of the flour until combined.

  2. Add the remaining egg whites and flour, folding gently without beating to avoid toughness.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whites trapped by whisking give the cake its airy structure and lift.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip to a light, stable base.
Bitter almonds
Add nutty, aromatic flavor and moisture from the ground almonds.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites and flour. Folding gently keeps the air in the whisked whites; beating deflates them and develops gluten, which makes the cake dense and tough.

“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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