Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Jelly Cake

A cake with almond paste filling and a batter of sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Jelly 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 batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar, butter, and egg yolks.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture and sweet milk to the creamed mixture, mixing well.

  5. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them into the batter along with the lemon flavoring.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, pound the blanched almonds into a paste.

  2. In a bowl, combine the almond paste, sour cream, sugar, and beaten eggs.

  3. Stir well and add vanilla to taste.

  4. Use the almond sauce to fill the layers of the cake.

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

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

  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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites trapped as foam give the cake lift and a light, tender crumb.
Butter
Fat coats flour proteins and adds richness and a tender texture to the cake.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise in the oven.
Blanched almonds
Ground into a paste, they provide the nutty flavor and body of the filling.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tangy acidity to the almond filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to a stiff froth and folded gently. Overmixing deflates the air bubbles that make the cake rise and stay light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes