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Dessert

Almond Cake

A cake made from ground almonds, powdered sugar, eggs, flour, lemon rind, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Pound the almonds very fine with a little orange-flower water.

  2. Add the grated lemon rinds and yolks of the eggs, beating until the mixture is as white as a sponge paste.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy and mix them lightly with the paste.

  4. Gradually add the flour, mixing as lightly as possible.

Bake

  1. Butter a mold and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 1 hour, using many folds of paper underneath and one on top.

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

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

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the cake, pounded fine into the batter.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter and yolks add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Gives the cake its set structure once baked, so it must be folded in gently.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks whip into a pale, smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites and flour. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites and develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake dense and heavy instead of light and tender.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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