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Dessert

Russian Cake

A sweet almond and anise cake made with egg yolks and whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Russian 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 5 eggs with ½ pound of sugar.

  3. Slowly add 3 ounces of flour and 2 ounces of chopped almonds.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of anise seed.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the 5 egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into long narrow tins lined with paper.

  2. Bake until golden and dry, then cut into slices before serving.

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. Almond + anisetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + anisetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the yolks while mixing.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the structure as the cake bakes.
Chopped almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slightly firm texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating the batter makes the cake dense instead of light.

Swap the anise

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Anisethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, 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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