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Almond Paste for Shaping Into Pears, Apples, Nuts, Etc.

A sweet almond paste mixed with egg and powdered sugar, shaped into fruit or nut shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Almond Paste for Shaping Into Pears, Apples, Nuts, Etc.

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and dry the almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar until very fine.

Make the paste

  1. Add the egg and powdered sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pan and heat gently, stirring until lukewarm and not sticky.

  3. Shape the paste into any kind of fruit.

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).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and flavor of the paste once finely ground.
Egg
Binds the ground almonds and sugar into a cohesive mixture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it hold together as it is worked.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture gently. Heating gently and stopping at lukewarm keeps the egg from cooking and the paste from turning sticky or greasy. Overheating can make it tough to shape, so it should only be warmed until it is no longer sticky.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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