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Dessert

Wheat Cake

A cake made from soaked wheat, almonds, pine kernels, pecans, raisins, egg white, and coconut milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 176 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Wheat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wheat

  1. Soak the wheat in water for 6 hours.

  2. Mash the soaked wheat as fine as possible.

Assemble and finish

  1. Add the chopped almonds, ground pine kernels, ground pecans, and chopped raisins to the wheat.

  2. Mix thoroughly and spread the mixture to ½ inch thick on a dish.

  3. Cover with frothed egg white and pour the coconut milk over it.

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 + pinetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Pecans + coconuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat
Forms the body of the cake; soaking softens it so it can be mashed into a base.
Egg white
When frothed, it adds lightness and helps the top set during cooking.
Coconut milk
Adds moisture and richness to the cake.
Almonds
Add fat, nutty flavor and a bit of texture.
Pecans
Add fat, nutty flavor and texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy bits of texture.

The step that matters

Mash the soaked wheat as fine as possible. A finely mashed wheat base holds the added nuts and raisins together evenly and gives a smooth, cohesive layer instead of a crumbly one.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, almond, pine, pecans, egg, milk, coconut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, almond, pine, pecans, egg, milk, coconut. 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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