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Dessert

To Make an Almond Cake

A baked almond cake made with blanched almonds, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, flour, lemon peel, cinnamon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Make an 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the yolks of 8 eggs with the pounded almonds.

  2. Beat the egg whites until they form a solid froth.

  3. Combine the sugar, flour, grated lemon peel, and pounded cinnamon with the almond mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Grease a cake mold with fresh butter and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake until the cake is a light color.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cake.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they give the cake lightness and rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise the crumb.
Fine flour
Gives the batter enough structure to hold its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Those bubbles are what lift the cake, so overmixing will leave it dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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