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Dessert

Almond Dessert Biscuits

Almond dessert biscuits are sweet biscuits made from sugar, ground almonds, flour, and egg whites, piped into shapes and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Almond Dessert Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, ground almonds, flour, and egg whites to form a stiff dough.

Shape and decorate

  1. Use a star tube to pipe the dough onto wafer paper in various shapes.

  2. Melt some chocolate and mix it with a portion of the dough.

  3. Use a smaller tube to pipe chocolate dots onto the shapes and decorate with dried cherries.

  4. Combine three pieces of dough to form clusters resembling filberts and top with cut almonds.

Dry and bake

  1. Let the piped shapes dry for a few hours.

  2. Bake slowly in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the almonds, gives the dough its body.
Ground almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and the bulk of the dough's structure.
Flour
Helps bind the dough and gives it enough structure to hold its piped shape.
Whites of eggs
Bind the dough and help it set into a stiff, shapeable mass.

The step that matters

Let the piped shapes dry for a few hours. Drying forms a thin surface skin before baking, which helps the shapes hold their outline and keeps them from spreading or cracking in the oven.

“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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