Skip to main content
Dessert

Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

A buttery almond cake flavored with maraschino liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

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

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds to a paste.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

Make the batter

  1. Add sugar, flour, pounded almonds, and beaten egg yolks to the butter.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites and maraschino liqueur.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a flat tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Decorate the top with almonds.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavor, and give the cake its moist, dense crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, creating a tender texture when beaten until creamy.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they lighten the batter and help it rise and set in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and binding to the batter.
Flour
Provides structure so the cake holds its shape as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air whipped into them; folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the cake rises lightly instead of turning dense.

“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