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Dessert

Ratafia Cakes

A light almond meringue cake made with bitter and sweet almonds, egg whites, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ratafia Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Finely grind the bitter and sweet almonds in a mortar.

  2. Beat the 4 egg whites until frothy and mix with the ground almonds.

  3. Gradually stir in the loaf sugar until well combined.

  4. Add the 9 egg whites and mix until light and fluffy.

Shape and bake

  1. Using a biscuit funnel, pipe the mixture onto cartridge paper in drops the size of a shilling.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until light brown.

  3. Carefully remove the cakes from the paper after baking.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps the cakes rise.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, as it dissolves into the whites, helps stabilise the meringue structure.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body, giving the cakes a tender, chewy crumb.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, more pronounced almond aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and mixing until light and fluffy. Overmixing knocks out the air trapped in the whites, so the piped drops spread flat and bake dense instead of light.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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