Name: Almond Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound pound-cake mixture; essence of almond; ground almonds; pulverized sugar; whole eggs

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 ↓

Almond Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a pound-cake mixture flavored with essence of almond.
Bake in small round hoops until done and cool.
Cut the tops level.
Make almond paste by mixing ground almonds and pulverized sugar, then work in whole eggs until smooth and firm.
Mold the almond paste into a circular design matching the cake tops.
Decorate each top with an embossed almond paste design.

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.

Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).