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Ratafia Biscuits

Almond and sugar biscuits made with sweet and bitter almonds, egg whites, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ratafia Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the paste

  1. Finely pound the sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar with the egg whites.

  2. In a bowl, mix the powdered sugar with the egg whites until it reaches the proper thickness.

Shape and bake

  1. Line a baking plate with two or three sheets of paper.

  2. Using a knife and a wooden spatula, drop the mixture onto the paper in round shapes about the size of a large nutmeg.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until they are a fine brown, ensuring they do not burn on the bottom.

  4. Allow the biscuits to cool completely before removing them from the paper.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and the bulk of the biscuit's body.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, sharper almond aroma that balances the sweetness.
Egg whites
Bind the ground almonds and sugar into a paste that holds its shape.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and stiffens the paste so it can be dropped in rounds.

The step that matters

Bringing the paste to the proper thickness. If the mixture is too wet it spreads into flat, pale puddles; if too dry it cracks and does not bind. The right consistency lets the rounds hold their shape while baking and browning evenly.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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