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Dessert

Biscuit Tortoni

A frozen custard dessert made with sugar, water, egg yolks, sherry, maraschino liqueur, almonds, powdered macaroons, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Biscuit Tortoni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil sugar and water for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks and cook for 5 more minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Add sherry, maraschino, chopped almonds, and powdered macaroons.

  2. Fold this mixture into the whipped cream until well combined.

  3. Freeze for 4 hours before serving.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Cooked into the syrup, they thicken it and add richness to the frozen dessert.
Whipped cream
Forms the airy bulk of the torte, giving a light, frozen texture.
Powdered macaroons
Adds almond-like flavor and a sandy texture to the cream mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps keep the frozen dessert from freezing too hard.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks into the syrup. Egg yolks can scramble if added to hot syrup too quickly or overcooked. Cooking them gently until slightly thickened gives a smooth base that holds together when folded into the cream.

“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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