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Dessert

Ratafia-cake

A light almond cake made with egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, flour, and chopped bitter and sweet almonds.

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 ↓

Ratafia-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until they are light in color.

  2. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat well.

  3. Stir in the flour gradually.

  4. Beat the egg whites until frothy and fold in a spoonful at a time as you mix in the flour.

  5. Finally, fold in the chopped almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pan and bake for 1.5 hours.

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and structure through their fat and emulsifiers, helping the batter bind.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they trap air that lifts the cake as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip to a light, stable texture.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor, moisture, and a tender crumb to the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped to frothy foam and folded in gently, a spoonful at a time, so the air they hold is not knocked out. Losing that air leaves the cake dense and flat.

“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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