Why it works: Almond and lemon 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 Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the almonds
Blanch the almonds and soak them in clean water for 1 to 2 days.
Drain the almonds and pound them extremely fine.
Sieve and repeat
Pass the pounded almonds through a fine sieve.
Return the residue to be pounded again, sprinkling with lemon juice to prevent clumping.
Repeat until all almonds are passed through the sieve.
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 + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,655 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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 fat that make up the paste.
- Lemon juice
- Acidity helps stop the pounded almond from clumping together while it is worked.
The step that matters
Pounding the almonds extremely fine. Fine, even pounding breaks the almond structure so the paste becomes smooth rather than grainy. Residue left coarse must be pounded again, which is why repeated sieving matters.
“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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