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Dessert

Nougat Almond Cake

A cake made of sweet and bitter almonds bound with powdered sugar and pressed into a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Nougat Almond Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the sweet almonds and bitter almonds into dice.

  2. Dry the almonds in the oven while preserving their white appearance.

Make the nougat

  1. In a pan, melt the powdered sugar over gentle heat without adding water.

  2. Once melted, add the perfectly dry almonds to the sugar.

  3. Oil your mold and press the almonds into it using the oiled lemon.

  4. Let it cool, then turn it out of the mold and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main bulk and nutty flavour of the cake.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharper, more intense almond aroma in small quantity.
White powdered sugar
Melts to a syrup that binds the almonds together as the nougat sets.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar without water. Sugar melted over gentle heat without water can scorch quickly and turn bitter or brown. Keeping heat low lets it liquefy evenly so it coats and binds the almonds.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar. 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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