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Dessert

German Almond Tortb

A sweet almond cake made with sugar, eggs, ground bitter almonds, lemon rind, and flour, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

German Almond Tortb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, stir the granulated sugar with the egg yolks for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, ground almonds, and flour to the mixture.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites, similar to making Angel Food cake.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a drop rim pan lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites, beaten and folded in, give the torte its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and, stirred with the yolks, helps create a smooth, thick base.
Bitter almonds
Provide the main nutty, almond flavour and body, with fat that keeps the crumb moist.
All-purpose flour
Adds a small amount of starch that gives the batter enough structure to hold its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg white foam holds the batter's air. Stirring vigorously deflates it, so the torte bakes dense instead of light and airy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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