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Dessert

Rout Cakes

A small almond cake flavored with lemon peel and nutmeg, made from ground almonds, sugar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rout Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Combine ground almonds, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel in a bowl.

  2. Mix until it forms a stiff paste; add more egg yolk if too stiff.

  3. Shape the mixture into cakes by hand, without using cutters.

Bake

  1. Place the cakes on sugared paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Ground almonds
Provide the bulk and rich, fatty body of the shortbread.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.
Egg yolk
Binds the almonds and sugar into a paste that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Mix to a stiff paste before shaping. Ground almonds contain no gluten, so the egg yolk is the only binder. Too little yolk leaves the cakes crumbly, while too much makes the dough sticky and soft, so the cakes may spread in the oven.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, lemon, egg):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, lemon, egg. 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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