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Dessert

Hazel-nut Cake

A layered cake with a hazelnut taffy-like filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hazel-nut 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg and egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the wet mixture.

  6. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil 1 cup of sugar and thick cream with chopped hazelnuts until it reaches a taffy-like consistency.

  2. Spread the filling between the baked layers.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + hazelnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg and egg yolks
Provide structure as they set in the baking, and richness from the yolks.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when boiled, cooks down to a taffy-like filling.
Thick cream
Adds fat and moisture to the filling, giving it a soft, smooth body.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling to taffy-like consistency. Sugar and cream must be cooked until the mixture thickens to the right stage. Undercooked filling stays runny and soaks into the layers, while overcooked filling turns hard and brittle when it cools.

Swap the hazelnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour, cream. 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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