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Dessert

French Cake

A French cake made with eggs, sugar, lemon peel, wheat and rice flour, almonds, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

French 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs and beat them separately.

  3. Pound and sift the sugar.

  4. Grate the lemon peel.

  5. Dry and sift the wheat flour and rice flour.

  6. Prepare a baking pan with parchment paper and butter it.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sweet and bitter almonds into a pulpy mass in a mortar.

  2. Mix the orange flower water with the almond mixture until well combined.

  3. Combine all ingredients together.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped separately, the whites and yolks give the cake its light, airy structure.
Wheat flour
Provides the main structure once its starches set in the oven.
Rice flour
Adds a lighter, more tender crumb than wheat flour alone.
Sweet almonds
Contribute moisture, fat and a nutty flavour to the crumb.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites and yolks separately. Whites hold air when beaten to a foam, and that trapped air is what lifts the cake. Keeping yolks and whites apart lets you beat the whites properly before folding everything together, so the cake rises well and stays light.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon, wheat, flour, rice, almond):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, wheat, flour, rice, 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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