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Dessert

Almond Cake, Plain

A baked almond cake made with sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, butter, and gluten flour.

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 ↓

Almond Cake, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Pound the blanched almonds with the sugar rubbed on lemon rind.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs well.

  2. Add the beaten yolks with the butter and gluten flour.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  4. Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture.

  5. Mix everything well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Whites whipped to a stiff froth lighten the batter, and the yolks add richness and binding.
Sweet almonds
Pounded into the batter, they supply the main body, nutty flavour and moistness of the cake.
Gluten flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps keep the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Whites whipped to a stiff froth trap air that makes the cake rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and keeps the batter light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, egg, butter, flour. 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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