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Almond Taste

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Taste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

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

  2. Drain and dry the almonds, then pound them extremely fine.

  3. Sift the pounded almonds through a fine sieve, returning any residue to be pounded again.

  4. Sprinkle with lemon juice while pounding to prevent oiling.

Cook and finish the paste

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

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Pound again, adding dissolved gum dragon in cold water.

  4. Pass through a sieve to achieve a fine 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
Form the main body of the paste and supply its fine, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and, with gentle heat, helps it firm into a workable mass.
Gum dragon
Binds the paste with moisture so it holds together smoothly.
Lemon juice
Acidity that helps keep the pounded almonds from releasing oil.

The step that matters

Pounding with lemon juice and heating with sugar. Almonds release oil when crushed, so adding lemon juice while pounding helps keep the paste from becoming greasy. Heating with sugar over gentle heat drives off moisture so the paste firms up; overheating can scorch the sugar or make it oily.

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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