Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Almond, or Orgeat Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the almonds
Blanch the almonds in boiling water, then quickly skin them.
Drop the skinned almonds into cold water to whiten them.
After two days, remove the almonds from the cold water and let them dry.
Pound the dried almonds finely, adding a little orange-flower water occasionally.
Make the paste
Clarify the sugar and boil it to the 'Crack' stage.
Pour the hot sugar into the pounded almonds and mix well with a wooden spoon.
Transfer the mixture to an earthenware pan to cool.
Once cool, pound the mixture again in a mortar.
On a marble slab sprinkled with sugar, shape the paste into sticks or your preferred form.
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 + orangetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,125 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Almonds
- Provide the bulk and rich nutty flavour of the paste once finely pounded.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the paste and, boiled to the crack stage, binds the pounded almonds into a firm mass.
- Orange-flower water
- Adds a floral aroma and keeps the almonds moist while they are pounded.
The step that matters
Pouring the hot sugar into the almonds. Sugar boiled to the crack stage hardens as it cools, so it must be mixed in while hot and worked evenly to form a cohesive paste. If it cools first, the almonds and sugar will not bind well.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond. 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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