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Dessert

Almond Taste

A baked almond paste confection filled with cream or jelly.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Blanch and finely pound the almonds.

  2. In a bowl, combine the almonds, egg yolks, flour, oiled butter, and sifted sugar.

  3. Mix the ingredients thoroughly until a stiff paste forms.

  4. Roll out the paste and cut into desired shapes.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake the shapes until golden, then let them cool.

  2. Fill the cooled shapes with creams or jellies.

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. Almond + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Jordan almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the paste.
Egg yolks
Bind the paste and add richness and tenderness.
Flour
Gives the paste enough body to hold its shape when rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and richer flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the shapes brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Mix until a stiff paste forms. The paste must be mixed thoroughly so the almonds, yolks, flour and butter combine evenly. Uneven mixing leaves dry or greasy patches that crack when rolled and cut.

“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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