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Dessert

Almond Cakks

Almond cakes made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon and almond extracts, ginger, cinnamon, almonds, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Almond Cakks

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Make the dough

  1. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  2. Add the eggs and extracts last.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut into fancy shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until lightly golden.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Rubbed into the flour to give the cakes a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the cakes.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure of the dough.
Blanched almonds
Add body and a nutty texture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Baking until lightly golden. Butter-rich doughs brown quickly at the edges, and the cakes can turn dry or bitter if overbaked. Pull them when they are only lightly golden, since they keep firming as they cool.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, lemon, almond, cinnamon. 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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