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Toad-in- A-hole Biscuits

Almond and cherry biscuits dusted with powdered sugar, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

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 paste

  1. Pound sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar with water until very fine.

  2. Mix the almond paste with Lisbon sugar until well combined; do not make it too thin.

Shape the biscuits

  1. Line a baking sheet with paper.

  2. Place wafer paper on top.

  3. Spoon the mixture onto the wafer paper, forming rounds the size of a half-crown piece.

  4. Place one or two dried cherries in the center of each biscuit.

  5. Sift powdered sugar over the biscuits.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Once baked, cut the wafer paper around the biscuits, leaving the bottom paper intact.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Form the bulk of the paste, providing body and a mild, nutty flavor.
Bitter almonds
Add a stronger, aromatic almond flavor that balances the sweetness.
Lisbon sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps bind it into a stable, moldable mixture.

The step that matters

Mixing the almond paste with sugar. If the paste is too thin, the spooned rounds will spread flat in the oven and lose their shape. Keeping it thick holds the biscuits' form while they bake.

“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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