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 ↓
Gold and Silver 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease and flour two cake pans.
Make the batter
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Fold half of the beaten egg whites into the batter.
Add the baking powder, salt, and flour, mixing gently.
Divide the batter into two bowls. Add bitter almond extract to one and lemon extract to the other.
Fold the remaining egg whites into each batter.
Bake and cool
Pour the silver batter into one pan and the gold batter into the other.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool before removing from pans.
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.
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Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,673 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,655 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
-
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,245 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
- Unsalted butter
- Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
- Granulated sugar
- Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and browning.
- Large eggs
- Yolks add richness and emulsify; whites, whipped and folded in, lighten the batter.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
The step that matters
Folding the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the cake light. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, almond):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, 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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