Why it works: Sugar and hazelnut work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Hazel Nut Cake
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Beat the egg yolks, salt, and sugar until foamy.
Grind the hazelnuts to a flour with the skins.
Crush the lady fingers into fine crumbs.
Fold the ground hazelnuts and lady finger crumbs into the yolk mixture.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.
Bake and cool
Pour the mixture into a pan and bake until golden.
Let the cake cool in the pan before removing.
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.
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Sugar + hazelnuttop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together649 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + hazelnuttop 28% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together518 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Egg whites, beaten stiff, lift the batter and give the cake its airy structure.
- Hazelnuts
- Ground hazelnuts provide the main body, nutty flavour and moisture of the cake.
- Lady fingers
- Crumbs add bulk and tenderness, binding the batter with little or no flour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks foam and the crumb brown during baking.
The step that matters
Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff, and overmixing or vigorous stirring deflates them. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles that make the cake rise and stay light.
Swap the hazelnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):
- Pecansfits better
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Hazelnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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