Name: Sweet Cakes
Ingredients: 6 ounces ground sweet almonds; 4 ounces arrowroot biscuits, powdered; 4 ounces sifted sugar; 1 teaspoon Borwick’s baking powder; juice of 1 orange; 6 egg yolks; juice of ½ pound freshly preserved strawberries

Why it works: Arrowroot and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sweet Cakes

Ingredients

6 ounces ground sweet almonds
4 ounces arrowroot biscuits, powdered
4 ounces sifted sugar
1 teaspoon Borwick’s baking powder
juice of 1 orange
6 egg yolks
juice of ½ pound freshly preserved strawberries

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine ground almonds, powdered arrowroot biscuits, sifted sugar, baking powder, orange juice, egg yolks, and strawberry juice.
Mix thoroughly and pour into a shallow mold.
Place strawberries evenly throughout the mixture.

Bake and serve

Bake until the cake is done and resembles sponge cake.
Remove from the oven and let it set in the mold until cool.
Serve cold.

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.

Arrowroot + biscuittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together388 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,125 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Arrowroot + orangetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground sweet almonds: Provides the main body and a nutty flavour, forming the bulk of the cake.
Egg yolks: Add richness and help bind the batter and set it during baking.
Arrowroot biscuits: Add dry crumb structure to the batter in place of flour.
Sifted sugar: Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the oven.
Borwick's baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Freshly preserved strawberries: Add fruit flavour and moisture to the cake.

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Orangethe original

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