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Dessert

Almond Cake

A simple cake made with flour, sugar, almonds, and almond extract, topped with boiled icing and sliced almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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. Prepare a spice cake batter, omitting the spices.

  2. Fold in the chopped almonds and almond extract.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Cover the cooled cake with boiled icing.

  3. Sprinkle sliced almonds on top for garnish.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Chopped almonds
Add nutty flavor and a bit of texture to the batter.
Almond extract
Adds concentrated almond aroma to the batter.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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