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Almond Paste

A sweet almond paste made by blanching, pounding, sieving, and mixing with sugar and gum dragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Blanch the almonds and soak them in clean water for 1-2 days.

  2. Drain the almonds and pound them extremely fine, sprinkling with lemon juice to prevent oiling.

  3. Pass the pounded almonds through a fine sieve, returning the residue to pound again until all is sieved.

Cook the paste

  1. In a pan, combine the almonds with 1 pound of sugar over gentle heat, stirring with a wooden spatula until it no longer sticks to your fingers.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

Finish the paste

  1. Pound again in a mortar, adding the dissolved gum dragon in cold water.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to achieve a smooth paste.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and fat that make up the paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it firm up as it cooks and dries.
Gum dragon
Thickens and binds the dissolved mixture, giving the paste a smooth, cohesive texture.
Lemon juice
Added during pounding to help prevent the almond oil from separating out.

The step that matters

Cooking the almonds with sugar until they no longer stick to your fingers. Heating drives off moisture so the paste becomes firm enough to handle. Stopping too early leaves it sticky and wet, while overcooking makes it dry and crumbly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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