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Dessert

Almond Ploweks

Almond Ploeks are puff pastry rounds filled with almonds, dusted with sugar, baked, and garnished with apple jelly and strawberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and strawberry jam work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Almond Ploweks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to ½ inch thick and cut out large rounds with a fluted cutter.

  2. Rework the pastry scraps, roll out again, and cut out smaller rounds.

  3. Brush the larger rounds with egg white and place a smaller round on top of each.

Decorate and bake

  1. Blanch and slice the almonds lengthwise, then press them into the pastry around the edges.

  2. Dust with pounded sugar and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with strips of apple jelly and a small amount of strawberry jam in the center.

  2. Serve piled high on a dish.

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. Apple + strawberry jamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Almond + appletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Puff pastry
Its layers puff and separate in the oven, giving the cookies a light, flaky structure.
Almonds
Their oils and proteins brown in the oven, adding nutty flavour and a crisp edge.
Egg white
Brushed on as a glue, it helps the small round stick to the large one and sets to a glossy finish.
Sifted sugar
Dusted on top, it caramelises in the oven for sweetness and a golden shine.

The step that matters

Brushing the egg white and stacking the rounds. Egg white is the only thing holding the top round to the base. If it is applied unevenly or the pastry is too warm, the layers can slip apart or fail to rise cleanly in the oven.

Swap the strawberry jam

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Strawberry jamthe original

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