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Dessert

Almond Cake. No. 1.

A layered almond cake with a sweet almond filling and topped with chopped almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Cake. No. 1.

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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, flour, egg whites, baking powder, and lemon extract; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, pound the almonds in a mortar until fine.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix in 1 cup of sugar, the almonds, and vanilla extract.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers.

  2. Ice the top of the cake and sprinkle with chopped 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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Almonds
Give the filling body, moisture, and nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Pound the almonds until fine. Almonds that are left coarse make the filling gritty and uneven. Fine almonds blend smoothly into the eggs and sugar, giving a moist, even filling between the layers.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, almond, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, almond, vanilla. 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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Coconut 13Filling 7Jordan 7Lemon 7Currant 6French 5 See all 358 →

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