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Dessert

Spanish Cakes

A sweet almond-based cake with eggs, sugar, flour, wine, and spices, baked in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Spanish Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Remove the shells from the eggs and froth them in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in the sugar, dried flour, and almond paste with orange-flower water.

  3. Add the rose-water, mountain wine, and pounded cinnamon, then mix for half an hour.

Bake

  1. Butter a pan and bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C).

Make the alternative batter

  1. For the alternative method, mix fine dried flour with sifted loaf-sugar.

  2. Rub in the fresh butter until it resembles crumbled bread.

  3. Add the rose-water, white wine, and whisk in the eggs.

  4. Fold in the currants.

  5. Butter small tin pans, filling them halfway.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Foam and set the cake, giving it lift and structure as they bake.
Almonds
Provide the bulk of the cake, adding moisture, richness and a dense, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Dried flour
Gives the cake body and helps hold its structure together.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Rub in the fresh butter. Butter must be worked into the flour and sugar until it resembles crumbled bread so the fat is evenly distributed. Uneven pieces of fat create dense or greasy spots in the finished cake.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, almond, rose, wine, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, almond, rose, wine, cinnamon. 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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