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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A cake made from almond paste, flour, butter, lemon, sugar, eggs, baked and layered with jam and pistachio.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Neapolitan Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds with 1 tablespoon of orange-flower water into a smooth paste.

  2. Mix the almond paste with the flour and pieces of butter.

  3. Rub the sugar onto the lemon peel. Pound the lemon peel finely.

  4. Add the lemon peel to the flour and almond mixture.

  5. Incorporate the yolks of 4 well-beaten eggs into the mixture.

  6. Roll the dough to about ¼ inch thick.

  7. Cut the dough with a fluted cutter.

  8. Place each piece on a lightly floured tin.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the baked pieces from the oven. Let them cool.

  3. Spread a layer of jam on one side of each slice.

  4. Stack the slices to form a cake.

  5. Decorate the top with small pieces of pistachio nuts.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the cut pieces together.
Sweet almonds
Provide the bulk of the paste, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and carries flavour.
Eggs
Yolks bind the dough and add richness and colour.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the pieces at a low temperature. A slow oven dries the thin pieces evenly without over-browning them, so they stay firm yet tender. Higher heat can scorch the edges before the centres set.

Swap the orange

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

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

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