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Dessert

Almond Cake

A layered almond cake with a sweet almond filling baked in jelly tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Gradually add the milk, then the egg whites and flour mixed with cream of tartar and baking soda.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, blanch and finely pound the almonds.

  2. Beat the whites and yolks of 2 eggs together lightly.

  3. Add 1½ cups sugar, the pounded almonds, and 1 tablespoon vanilla to the egg mixture.

  4. Spread the almond filling between the layers of cake.

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. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (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 sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to give the batter rise.
Almonds
Provide the nutty flavour and moist, dense texture of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden. Baking soda and cream of tartar release gas only while the batter is in the oven, so the batter should go into the tins promptly and not sit. Stopping at golden keeps the crumb moist rather than dry.

“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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