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Dessert

Almond Crips

Almond Crips are almond-based pastries made with eggs, sugar, flour, orange zest, and finished with royal icing and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Almond Crips

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the blanched almonds with a little orange‑flower water until you have a fine paste.

  3. Add the eggs, egg yolks, powdered sugar, orange zest, and flour to the almond paste and mix well.

  4. Roll the mixture into a log shape using a rolling pin.

Bake and dry

  1. Brush the log with egg wash and place it on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  3. While hot, cut into thin slices and return to the oven to dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Once dried, moisten the edges with royal icing and dip in finely chopped pistachios.

  2. Let them dry for a few minutes 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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + pistachiotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Form the fine paste that gives the crisp its dense, nutty body.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown evenly while baking.
Flour
Adds structure so the log holds its shape when sliced.

The step that matters

Drying the thin slices. Slices must return to the oven until dry; leftover moisture keeps them soft instead of crisp, because crispness depends on driving water out of the dough.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, sugar, flour, pistachio. 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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