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Dessert

Candied Almond Cake, or Gateau Noga

A candied almond cake made by caramelizing sugar with sliced almonds, poured into a mold, cooled, and served with burnt cream or boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Candied Almond Cake, or Gateau Noga

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond cake

  1. Heat powdered sugar over medium heat until nearly dissolved.

  2. Add sliced almonds to the sugar and stir continuously until the almonds are a nice brown.

  3. Oil a jelly mold or another pan well and pour the almond mixture into it, pressing the almonds up against the sides.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool.

Serve

  1. Turn out the cooled cake to serve over burnt cream or boiled custard, or enjoy as is.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Melts into a syrup that caramelizes and binds the almonds together as the cake sets.
Sliced almonds
Provide the main body of the cake and, when toasted in the syrup, a nutty, browned flavour and crunch.

The step that matters

Stirring the almonds in the melted sugar until brown. Sugar can go from amber to burnt quickly. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the almonds brown without the syrup scorching, which would make the cake bitter.

“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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