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Dessert

German Almond Cake

A layered almond cake with cherries, baked and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

German Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat together the pounded almonds, crushed sugar, egg yolks, and bread crumbs for 15 minutes.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Fold the stiff egg whites gently into the almond mixture.

Layer and bake

  1. Grease a baking dish and sprinkle the dish with bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the dish halfway with the almond mixture.

  3. Add a layer of cherries sprinkled with crushed sugar.

  4. Add another layer of the almond mixture.

  5. Repeat until the dish is full.

  6. Bake carefully.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a serving dish.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Almond + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pounded almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cake.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the almond mixture together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Add light structure to the batter and absorb moisture.
Crushed sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the almonds brown lightly.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the cake bakes up denser and less airy.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, bread, butter. 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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