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Dessert

Chocolate Almond Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, spices, chocolate, flour, baking powder, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chocolate Almond Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and beat well.

  3. Mix in the vanilla, cinnamon, and ground cloves.

  4. Stir in the grated chocolate.

  5. Sift the flour with baking powder and add to the mixture.

  6. Fold in the chopped almonds.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut with a fancy cookie cutter and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly browned.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as the cookies set.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together after baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten slightly.
Bitter chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor and a bitter edge that balances the sugar.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavor throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until lightly browned. Baking at a low 300°F heat dries the cookies gently and browns them evenly. Too high a heat would brown the outside before the centre sets, and the cookies could turn dry or burnt.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, cinnamon, chocolate, 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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