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Dessert

Vanilla Kipfel

A small cookie made from flour, powdered sugar, butter, salt, grated almonds, baked and rolled in powdered sugar and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Vanilla Kipfel

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. Knead the flour, powdered sugar, butter, salt, and grated almonds together until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into one-inch square pieces and shape them into half moons.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until light yellow.

Coat and finish

  1. Once removed from the oven, roll the cookies in sifted powdered sugar mixed with grated vanilla bean.

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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape while baking.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, tender texture to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Grated almonds
Add nutty flavor and body, giving the cookies a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until light yellow only. Baking at a low temperature sets the cookie gently and browns it lightly. Over-baking dries the almond and butter dough and darkens the exterior, so checking for a pale golden colour matters.

“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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