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Dessert

Almond Creams

A candied almond dessert made with sugar, lemon, almond paste, and cooled into shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Boil the sugar with enough water to dissolve it until a little hardens slightly in ice water.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and shaved almond paste to the candy mixture when it starts to harden.

  3. Stir until well mixed, then boil steadily until it cracks crisply when dropped in ice water.

Set and shape

  1. Grease a dish with oil or butter and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Once cold, cut into squares or mold into shapes and dip in cream candy.

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 + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy base and, when boiled to a set stage, gives the firm, brittle structure.
Almond paste
Adds almond flavour and richness that soften the sharp, sugary bite of the candy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that give a fresh lemon fragrance.

The step that matters

Boiling to the crack stage. Sugar candy sets according to its final temperature. Boiling until the mixture cracks crisply in ice water gives a firm, brittle set. Stopping early leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long can make it bitter or hard to cut.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, butter. 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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