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Dessert

Almond Cake

A cake made with sweet and bitter almonds, syrup, lemon, eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Add syrup, lemon juice, and egg whites to prevent the almonds from oiling.

  3. Gradually mix in the beaten eggs and powdered sugar.

  4. Dredge in the flour slowly and mix thoroughly.

  5. Add the softened butter and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake mold.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cake when pounded smooth.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and help bind the batter together.
All-purpose flour
Gives the cake its structure as the starches set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and a moist crumb.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cake brown and soften in texture.

The step that matters

Add syrup, lemon juice, and egg whites while pounding the almonds. Almonds release oil when ground, and the liquids and egg whites help emulsify and hold that oil so the batter stays smooth instead of greasy or separated.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, syrup, egg, sugar, flour, butter):

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

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