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Dessert

German Citron-almond Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake with butter, milk, sugar, raisins, lemon peel, citron, and almonds, baked in 2-inch portions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

German Citron-almond Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the melted butter and warm milk.

  3. Add the yeast and stir in enough flour to make a stiff mixture.

  4. Tie the mixture loosely in a cloth and place it in a pail of water until it rises to the top.

Shape and bake

  1. Remove the dough from the cloth and mix in the sugar, raisins, lemon peel, citron, and almonds.

  2. Divide the mixture into cakes about 2 inches across.

  3. Bake on baking sheets.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and rich flavor.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its stiff structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in the cloth until it floats. The yeast must raise the dough fully before shaping. Under-rising leaves dense cakes, while the dough needs enough flour to hold its shape when removed from the cloth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, flour, sugar, raisin, almond. 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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