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Dessert

Almond Cream Cake

A sponge cake layered with a thick almond cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Cream 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 layers

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Sift in the powdered sugar and flour with the cream of tartar; gently fold together without beating.

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

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, heat the heavy cream in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, powdered sugar, and cornstarch dissolved in a little milk.

  3. Add the yolk mixture to the boiling cream, stirring until thickened.

  4. Blanch and finely chop the almonds, then stir them into the cream.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Assemble the cake by layering the cream between the cake layers while the icing is still soft.

  2. Garnish with split almonds.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 into a foam that gives the cake layers their light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so the foam holds its shape longer.
All-purpose flour
Provides the protein and starch that set the cake's crumb once baked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they cook and add richness and a smooth texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a rich, soft body.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a fine texture to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Folding the batter gently without beating. Beating knocks air out of the whipped egg white foam, so the batter bakes up dense and flat instead of light and airy.

“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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