Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Cake

A sweet almond cake with rose water, butter, and spices, finished with an almond icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. 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.

Bake the cake

  1. Layer the ground almonds, candies, and remaining ingredients in a baking dish.

  2. Bake for 5 hours.

Make the icing

  1. Prepare almond icing by mixing ground almonds with rose water, loaf sugar, and 4 egg whites.

  2. Spread the icing over the warm cake.

Make the meringue icing

  1. In a separate bowl, beat 6 egg whites for 1 hour.

  2. Gradually add the refined sugar while continuing to beat for another hour.

  3. Spread the icing evenly over the almond icing with a knife.

Store

  1. Store the cake in a dry place away from heat.

  2. Once dry, cover with a thin gauze to keep flies away.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Finely ground almonds
Provide the bulk of the cake, adding moisture, richness, and a nutty flavor.
Flour
Gives the cake its structure once the other ingredients set during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they add lightness and help the icing hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the icing and stabilizes the beaten egg whites when added gradually.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites with the sugar. Egg whites trap air only when beaten long enough, and adding sugar gradually stabilizes that foam. Adding it all at once or underbeating can leave the icing loose and less airy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, rose, sugar, egg, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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 almond cake recipes

Coconut 13Filling 7Jordan 7Lemon 7Currant 6French 5 See all 358 →

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesAlmond Paste TartletsAlmond Paste Tartlets10 recipes