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Dessert

Almond Iceing, or Almond Paste

A sweet almond cake topped with a butter and sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Iceing, or Almond Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Grind the almonds and mix with loaf sugar as for almond cakes.

  2. Soften the butter in an earthenware pan near the oven without letting it oil.

  3. Beat the softened butter until smooth, then mix in the powdered sugar.

  4. Add the eggs and water, and beat for two minutes.

  5. Gently mix in the flour and currants.

Bake and finish

  1. Butter small round tins, fill with the mixture, and bake in a brisk oven until done.

  2. When the cake is three-quarters done, spread the icing on top.

  3. Once half cold, remove the cakes from the tins by inverting and tapping the bottoms.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Ground almonds provide the dense, moist, nutty body of the cake.
Butter
Creamed butter gives the cake richness, tenderness and a fine crumb.
Eggs
Eggs add structure and lift as they set in the oven and enrich the crumb.
Flour
Flour gives the batter structure so it holds its shape as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sugar sweetens the batter and helps it brown at the surface as it bakes.

The step that matters

Softening the butter without oiling it. Butter that is too warm separates and turns oily, so it cannot trap air when beaten. A creamy, not melted, texture keeps the batter light and the crumb even.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, butter, egg, flour. 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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