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Dessert

Walnut Cake

A layered walnut and almond cake with whipped cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Walnut Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the walnuts and blanched almonds.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light.

  3. Add the grated nuts and sifted flour to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add a pinch of pulverized ammonia.

Bake and fill

  1. Layer the mixture in a baking dish and bake until golden.

  2. Fill the layers with sweetened whipped cream mixed with pounded walnuts and almonds.

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help bind the batter together.
All-purpose flour
Provides a small amount of starch that helps the layers hold their shape.
Walnuts
Supply the main body, nutty flavour and moisture of the cake.
Blanched almonds
Add bulk, delicate nutty flavour and a tender crumb to the layers.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff but not dry, since they supply the air that leavens the nut batter. Under-beaten whites leave the cake dense, and over-beaten whites break down and weep.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

More walnut cake recipes

Chocolate 9Date 7Filling 7English 6Raisin 4Sour Cream 3 See all 162 →

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