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Dessert

Engrossing with Flour

Almonds coated in cold sugar syrup and flour, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond 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 ↓

Engrossing with Flour

Ingredients

Directions

Coat and flour

  1. Coat almonds with cold sugar syrup until uniformly wet.

  2. Sprinkle common flour over the almonds, adding more if necessary during the sweating process.

  3. Avoid excess flour to prevent it from accumulating in the pan.

  4. Do not use heat while working with the flour for smoother results.

Dry and finish

  1. Let the coated almonds dry for a few days in a warm place before whitening them.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Syrup + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the base that the syrup and flour coating cling to.
Cold sugar syrup
Wets the almonds so the flour can adhere, and dries to a sweet, thin shell.
Common flour
Absorbs surface moisture from the syrup, producing a dry, powdery coating.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually. The flour must be added in small amounts so it sticks to the damp syrup layer. Excess flour that is not absorbed collects in the pan and clumps, leaving an uneven coating.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, 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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