Name: Filbert Biscuits
Ingredients: 3 pounds powdered sugar; Barcelona filbert nuts; whites of eggs

Why it works: Filbert and nuts work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 38 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Filbert Biscuits

Ingredients

3 pounds powdered sugar
Barcelona filbert nuts
whites of eggs

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.

Break the shells of the filbert nuts in a mortar and remove all shells.
Pound the nuts very fine in the mortar.
Mix the ground nuts with the whites of eggs until they do not oil.
Combine the mixture with the powdered sugar to achieve a proper thickness.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Drop small pieces of the mixture onto sheets of paper, the same size as orange and lemon biscuits.
Bake until they are a fine brown and all alike.
Let them cool before removing 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.

Filbert + nutstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together38 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Filbert + eggtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together86 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Nuts + eggtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,624 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).