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Dessert

Gâteau d’Amandes — Almond Cake

A simple almond cake made with flour, butter, sugar, salt, and ground almonds, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Gâteau d’Amandes — Almond Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. On a clean surface, place the flour and make a well in the center.

  2. Add the butter, salt, sugar, and ground almonds into the well.

  3. Knead the mixture until it forms a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into a cake.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

Finish

  1. Glaze the top with sugar using a hot salamander.

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown and caramelize during baking and glazing.
Sweet almonds, finely ground
Adds moisture, body, and nutty flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough. Kneading only until the dough just comes together keeps it tender. Overworking develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense.

“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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