Skip to main content
Dessert

Rout Cakes, or Fancy Biscuits

A shortbread-like biscuit made from ground almonds, sugar, and orange-flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rout Cakes, or Fancy Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the almonds in a mortar until very fine and smooth, adding orange-flower water to moisten.

  2. Combine the almond paste with sifted powdered sugar in a pan.

  3. Heat the pan over gentle heat, stirring constantly until the paste is compact and dry, and does not stick to your fingers.

Shape

  1. Roll the paste into short, thin lengths to create knots, crosses, ties, rings, or cut into various shapes.

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 main body and nutty flavour of the shortbread.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps bind the paste as it dries over heat.
Orange-flower water
Moistens the ground almonds so they can be pounded into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Heating the paste until dry. Heat must be gentle and stirring constant, because overheating can scorch the sugar and almonds, while underheating leaves the paste sticky and unable to hold its shape when rolled.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes