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Dessert

Chilian Almond Cakes

A sweet cake made with egg whites, sugar, almonds, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chilian Almond Cakes

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Soak the almonds in hot water to remove the skins.

  3. Pound the skinned almonds with a little sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually stir in the sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Fold the almond mixture into the egg and sugar mixture.

Bake

  1. Drop teaspoons of the mixture onto buttered and sugared paper in tins.

  2. Bake until lightly golden.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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 foam, they trap air and give the cakes their light, airy structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the cakes and stabilises the whipped whites, helping them hold their foam.
Almonds
Provide the main body, nutty flavour and richness of the cakes.

The step that matters

Fold the almond mixture into the egg and sugar mixture. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or overmixing knocks out that air, so the cakes bake up dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Filbertfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter. 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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