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Dessert

Almond Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, almonds, baking soda, and flour, brushed with egg yolk and sliced into long pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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

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.

Make the dough

  1. Stir the eggs and sugar together until very light.

  2. Add the almonds, baking soda, and flour, and mix well.

  3. Roll out the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the dough in a flat tin.

  2. Brush the top with the egg yolk.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

Finish

  1. Cut the cake into long slices.

  2. Set the slices on edge.

  3. Roast until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Trap air when beaten with sugar and bind the dough, giving it structure and moisture.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the eggs hold air when beaten to a light foam.
Unpeeled split almonds
Add texture, fat and nutty flavor to the crumb.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavening agent that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until very light. Beating eggs with sugar traps air in the foam, and that trapped air expands in the oven to lighten the cake. Stopping early leaves a denser result.

“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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