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Dessert

Polish Almond Cake

A buttery almond cake with eggs, flour, and sugar, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Polish 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. Cream together the butter and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

  3. Beat in the flour and baking powder until smooth.

  4. Stir half of the shredded almonds into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a small dripping pan.

  2. Strew the remaining almonds on top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture, with moisture from the shredded pieces.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs in one at a time. Adding each egg and beating it fully helps the butter and sugar form a stable emulsion that traps air. Dumping the eggs in together can curdle the batter and reduce the lift the cake gets from that trapped air.

“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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