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Dessert

Ratafia Cakes

A sweet almond cake flavored with ratafia water, made by blanching almonds, mixing with sugar and egg whites, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Ratafia Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond paste

  1. Blanch and beat the sweet and bitter almonds in orange, rose, or ratafia water to prevent oiling.

  2. Mix the pounded sugar with the almonds.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Heat the mixture in a preserving pan over moderate heat, stirring continuously until warm.

Shape and bake

  1. When slightly cool, form into small rolls and cut into thin cakes.

  2. Dust your hands with flour and shake it onto the cakes.

  3. Tap each cake lightly with your finger and place them on sugar papers.

  4. Sprinkle a little sugar on top before baking in a slack oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 nutty flavour and bulk of the almond paste.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, sharper almond aroma that balances the sweetness.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps give the cakes a crisp, set surface.
Whites of 4 eggs
Bind the almond and sugar mixture and help the cakes rise and hold shape.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture until warm. Heating gently and stirring constantly keeps the paste smooth and prevents the egg whites from scrambling or the mixture from catching on the pan. Overheating can make the paste oily and tough, so it should only be warmed, not cooked hard.

Swap the orange

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

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

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