Name: Almond Stollen
Ingredients: 2 pounds sweet almonds, blanched and chopped fine; 4 ounces Zwieback; standard dough mixture (flour, yeast, sugar, milk, butter, salt); 1 egg (for egg wash); icing (for decoration)

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 Stollen

Ingredients

2 pounds sweet almonds, blanched and chopped fine
4 ounces Zwieback
standard dough mixture (flour, yeast, sugar, milk, butter, salt)
1 egg (for egg wash)
icing (for decoration)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

Prepare the standard dough mixture as usual.
Incorporate the chopped sweet almonds and Zwieback into the dough.

Shape and bake

Shape the dough into a stollen and let it rise until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Brush the stollen with an egg wash before baking.
Bake the stollen until golden brown.
Once baked, ice the stollen after it cools.

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.

Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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: Provide the main filling texture and nutty flavor throughout the stollen.
Zwieback: Adds dry, crumbly texture and absorbs moisture within the dough.
Egg: Egg wash gives the crust a glossy, golden-brown surface when baked.

“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.