Name: Marie Paidar
Ingredients: one pound sweet butter; one-half cup cream; one-half pound coarsely chopped almonds; quarter pounds flour; one-half pound ground walnuts; one-half cups sugar; one beaten egg; two eggs; salt

Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Marie Paidar

Ingredients

Directions

CRESCENTS — Cream one pound sweet butter with one and one-half cups sugar, add one beaten egg, one-half cup cream, pinch salt, one-half pound coarsely chopped almonds and one and one- quarter pounds flour, mix well together, turn out on floured board, roll thin and cut in pieces three inches in diameter, place a little filling on each piece, roll up and shape into crescents. Filling: One-half pound ground walnuts, yolks of two eggs, small piece butter, sugar to taste. Mix to a smooth paste. Poppy seed filling may be used.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

768Calories

21 gProtein

27 gFat

109 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 8 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Cream	1 tbsp (15ml) heavy	51
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Walnut	1 walnut half (4g)	26
Almond	1 almond (1.2g)	7
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Paidar, Marie, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp. 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. See the original page.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

Swap the walnut

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

Pistachiofits better
Macadamia nutfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, almond, flour, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.