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Dessert

Albert Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with sugar, almonds, flour, egg yolks, whipped egg whites, candied orange peel, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Albert 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, almonds, egg yolks, cinnamon, and lemon sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and shredded orange peel, then gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture onto buttered and floured baking sheets.

  2. Bake until golden, then let cool before slicing into thin biscuits.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and give the biscuits a light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter together.
Almonds
Provide body and a nutty texture to the biscuits.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds its shape while baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating the batter makes the biscuits dense instead of light.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, flour, egg, orange, cinnamon, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, flour, egg, orange, cinnamon, lemon. 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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