Name: Almond Pound Cake
Ingredients: ¾ pound sweet almonds, blanched and finely chopped; 2 ounces bitter almonds, blanched and pounded to a paste; 1 tablespoon rose water; pound cake batter (prepared separately)

Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Pound Cake

Ingredients

¾ pound sweet almonds, blanched and finely chopped
2 ounces bitter almonds, blanched and pounded to a paste
1 tablespoon rose water
pound cake batter (prepared separately)

Directions

Make the batter

Prepare your pound cake batter as usual.
Add the finely chopped sweet almonds to the batter.
Mix the pounded bitter almonds with the rose water, then incorporate into the batter.

Bake

Bake according to your pound cake recipe.

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.

Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,465 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds: Add nut body and a fine, tender crumb to the batter.
Bitter almonds: Contribute a concentrated almond aroma and flavour to the batter.
Rose water: Adds a delicate floral aroma that complements the almond flavour.

“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.