Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Cream Cake

A layered cake made with stiff‑egg‑white batter and a sweet almond‑cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond 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 Cream 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.

Make the cake layers

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until stiff peaks form.

  3. Sift the powdered sugar and flour together four or five times, then gently fold into the egg whites along with the cream of tartar.

  4. Pour the mixture into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. Combine the sweet cream or milk, egg yolks, powdered sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch with a little milk, then mix it with the yolks and sugar.

  3. Boil the cream and stir in the yolk mixture until thickened.

  4. Blanch and finely chop the almonds, then stir them into the cream.

Assemble

  1. Assemble the cake layers with the cream filling like a jelly cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream filling as they cook and add richness to it.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure so the whipped batter sets into a cake layer rather than collapsing.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites, helping them hold their peaks.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and texture to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Folding the sifted sugar and flour into the egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Overmixing or deflating the foam makes the layers dense and flat after baking.

“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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes