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Dessert

Charlotte of Almonds a LA Moderne

A sweet almond-based dessert with a stiff almond paste and royal icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Charlotte of Almonds a LA Moderne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond paste

  1. Mix ground almonds, powdered sugar, and egg yolks into a stiff paste.

  2. Add more yolks if needed, and the lemon zest and vanilla sugar.

  3. Mold the mixture well, dusting with flour as needed.

  4. Roll it out into an oblong piece, dusting with flour above and below.

  5. Cut the rolled paste into strips 4.5 inches wide.

Ice the strips

  1. Prepare royal icing by mixing sifted icing sugar with egg whites and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Beat for about 10 minutes until firm.

  3. Add more lemon juice to the icing for smoothness.

  4. Mask the almond paste strips with the icing as thinly as possible.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground almonds
Provide the main body of the paste, giving it structure and a rich nutty flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it hold together as a firm, moldable dough.
Egg yolks
Bind the almonds and sugar into a stiff paste and add richness and moisture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a firm royal icing that sets over the paste.

The step that matters

Beat the icing until firm. Egg whites and icing sugar must be beaten long enough to build a stiff structure. Under-beaten icing stays runny and will not mask the paste cleanly or set smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour. 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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