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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A lemon‑almond cake made with almond paste, lemon zest, powdered sugar, and jam, finished with pistachio nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Neapolitan Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds with orange-flower water into a smooth paste.

  2. Mix the almond paste with the flour and pieces of butter.

  3. Rub the sugar onto the lemon zest, pound it fine, and add it to the flour and almond mixture.

  4. Incorporate the well-beaten egg yolks into the mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to about ¼ inch thick and cut with a fluted cutter.

  2. Place each piece on a lightly floured baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes until firm and golden.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Once cool, spread jam on one side of each slice and stack them to form a cake.

  2. Decorate the top with chopped pistachio nuts.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the rich dough together after baking.
Sweet and bitter almonds
Supply the bulk of the dough and a nutty, moist, tender crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the cookie-like dough tender and rich.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness, color, and tenderness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and yields a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until firm and golden. Baking low and slow dries the dough evenly so it sets firm without over-browning. Taking it out too early leaves the cut pieces soft and fragile, and too hot an oven browns the outside before the centre sets.

Swap the orange

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

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

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