Skip to main content
Dessert

Pistachio Cake

A cake made with egg whites, pistachios, sugar, flour, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio 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 batter

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Add the chopped pistachio nuts to the egg whites.

  3. Gradually mix in the sifted loaf sugar and dried flour.

  4. Fold in the whisked cream gently until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan.

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

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 that lifts and gives the cake its light structure.
Pistachio nuts
Add flavour, colour and a slightly dense, crunchy texture to the crumb.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Dried flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Thick cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the crumb tender and rich.

The step that matters

Folding in the whisked cream gently. Stiff egg whites hold the batter's air, and vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a flatter, denser cake. Gentle folding keeps the lift while combining the ingredients.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pistachio, sugar, flour, cream. 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.

You might also like

Pistachio Ice CreamPistachio Ice Cream36 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes