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Dessert

Imperial Cake

A rich almond and fruit cake with lemon, rose water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Imperial 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. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice, mixing well.

  3. Gradually incorporate the flour and then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Add the fruit and nuts

  1. Prepare the almonds, raisins, and citron by dredging them with 2 tablespoons of extra flour.

  2. Add the dredged fruits and nuts to the batter along with the nectarine extract, rose water, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lift and a light structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps build a smooth base and adds sweetness and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Almonds
Add body, a nutty flavour, and a moist, chewy texture to the crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped stiff and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out the air, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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