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Dessert

Imperial Cake

A rich almond and raisin cake flavored with lemon, rose water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Imperial 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice. Mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Add the fruit and flavourings

  1. Prepare the almonds, raisins, and citron by dredging them with 2 tablespoons of extra flour.

  2. Fold the dredged fruits and nuts into the batter.

  3. Add the nectarine extract, rose water, and brandy. Mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake its tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it bind and set.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Builds the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Almonds
Add body, richness and a moist, nutty texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently with a spatula keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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