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Dessert

Ratafias

A cake made with almonds, sugar, eggs, and Ratafia cakes, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Ratafias

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond paste

  1. Blanch and dry the almonds in the sun, then pound them with sifted sugar until well combined.

  2. Add egg whites one at a time to form a thin paste.

  3. Drop walnut-sized pieces onto wafer paper, sprinkle with sliced almonds and sugar, and bake in a slow oven until light brown.

Make the sponge

  1. Beat the yolks of 12 eggs and the whites of 6 eggs separately.

  2. Combine the yolks with sugar and beat until light.

  3. Gradually stir in flour, then fold in beaten egg whites.

  4. Add chopped almonds and pour into a pan, baking for 1.5 hours.

Shape and bake the cakes

  1. Mix Ratafia cakes, almonds, sugar, and lime rind, then combine with egg whites to form small balls.

  2. Place on paper and bake in a moderate 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 + limetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks give the cake its light, airy structure as they set in the oven.
Sweet almonds
Ground almonds add body, moisture and a rich nutty flavour to the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps the yolks and whites beat to a stable, light texture.
Flour
Provides structure so the folded batter sets into a cake rather than collapsing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten properly and folded in gently; overmixing or deflating them makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the lime

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

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

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