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Dessert

Almond Cake

A baked almond cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, almonds, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and finely chop the almonds.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the sugar and mix well.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix until combined.

  3. Fold in the chopped almonds.

  4. Pour the mixture into a tin lined with greased paper.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Reserve 1 tablespoon of almonds to sprinkle on top of the cake when it is just set.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and moisture, and give the cake its distinctive texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.

The step that matters

Sprinkling reserved almonds when the cake is just set. Adding the almonds too early lets them sink into the batter. Waiting until the surface has just set keeps them on top, where they can toast lightly.

“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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