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Dessert

Almond Simnel Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, rice flour, eggs, all-purpose flour, currants, and almond icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Simnel Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the cake batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, rice flour, eggs, all-purpose flour, and currants until well combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a cake tin, layer half of the mixture, then add a layer of almond icing, followed by the remaining mixture.

  2. Bake until nearly cooked, then remove from the oven and place small balls of almond icing on top.

Make the almond icing

  1. To make the almond icing, blend the bitter almonds, Valentia almonds, sugar, and egg whites until smooth.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as it sets.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Currants
Add pockets of fruitiness and chew throughout the cake.
Valentia almonds
Give the almond icing its flavour and body.

The step that matters

Baking until nearly cooked before adding the almond icing balls. Removing the cake at the right point keeps the crumb moist and lets the icing balls brown on the surface without drying or overcooking the sponge beneath.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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