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 ↓
Toad-in-a-hole Biscuits
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 the almond paste
Pound sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar with water until very fine.
Mix the ground almonds with Lisbon sugar until well combined; do not make it too thin.
Shape and bake
Line a baking sheet with wafer paper.
Using a spoon, form round biscuits on the wafer paper, about the size of a half-crown piece.
Place one or two dried cherries in the center of each biscuit.
Sift powdered sugar over the biscuits.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.
Once baked, cut the wafer paper around the biscuits but leave the paper underneath.
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.
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sweet almonds
- Provide the main body of the biscuit, forming a fine, soft paste that holds its shape.
- Bitter almonds
- Add a sharp, aromatic almond flavour that balances the sweetness.
- Lisbon sugar
- Sweetens the paste and helps bind the ground almonds into a dough.
The step that matters
Keeping the almond paste thick. If the paste is too thin, the biscuits will spread in the oven and lose their round shape. Ground almonds with a firm consistency hold their form under heat.
“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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