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Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

A cake made from almond paste, sugar, egg whites, and rose water, finished with sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cakes, Scones, Biscuits, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond mixture

  1. Pound the sweet and bitter almonds to a paste in a mortar.

  2. Add the white sugar and pound the two together well, adding a little rose water.

  3. Mix the almond paste with the well-whisked egg whites to achieve a proper consistency.

Finish the cake

  1. Spread the mixture over the top of the cake.

  2. Dry the cake before the fire, and when cold, cover it with sugar icing.

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 + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body of the paste.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, more pronounced almond aroma to the paste.
White sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it bind when pounded with the almonds.
Egg whites
Whisked to give the mixture lightness and help it set as it dries.

The step that matters

Mixing the almond paste with the whisked egg whites. Egg whites must be well whisked and folded in to the right consistency; under-whisked whites leave the topping dense, while overmixing can deflate the foam and loosen the paste.

“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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