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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) · 12 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, lemon rind, and lemon juice; mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and mix until combined.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Dredge the almonds, raisins, and citron with 2 tablespoons of flour.

  6. Add the dredged fruits, nectarine extract mixture, rose water, and brandy to the batter; mix gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites add lift and structure as the cake bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a firm, chewy bite throughout the crumb.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks and then folded gently. Overmixing deflates the foam, which reduces the rise and leaves a denser cake.

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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