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Almond Paste

A sweet paste made from almonds, sugar, orange flower water, egg white, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and dry the almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar with orange flower water and sugar.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the paste

  1. Heat in a small pan, stirring continually until dry and not sticking to the pan.

  2. Mix with egg white, sifted sugar, and enough flour to form a firm paste.

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Jordan almonds
Form the main body of the paste and give it its nutty base.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps bind the pounded almonds into a smooth mass.
Egg white
Adds moisture and binds the mixture into a firm, cohesive paste.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture so it holds together as a firm paste.

The step that matters

Heat in a small pan, stirring continually until dry and not sticking to the pan.. Heating drives off moisture so the almond mixture can be shaped into a firm paste. Stopping the stirring or heating too long can scorch the sugar and nuts, giving a bitter, burnt flavour.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar, egg, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, egg, 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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