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Dessert

Almond Cookies

Almond Cookies are a sweet baked treat made with eggs, almonds, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated yolks, chopped almonds, butter, beaten eggs, lemon rind, brandy, hartshorn, sugar, and cinnamon.

  3. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out.

  4. Lightly grease baking pans.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Mix the remaining egg yolks with a little milk and brush the tops of the cookies.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped almonds, sugar, and cinnamon.

  4. Bake until golden.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds fat that gives the cookies a rich, tender crumb.
Raw eggs
Bind the dough together and add structure as they set in the oven.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and a finely textured body to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a dense, moist texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Butter-rich doughs brown quickly at the edges, so the cookies can over-brown or dry out before the centres are set. Watch the colour rather than relying only on time, since browning comes from sugars and proteins reacting with heat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, almond, butter, brandy, sugar, cinnamon, 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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