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Dessert

Biscuits, Toad-in-a-hole

Almond biscuits with a cherry center, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Biscuits, Toad-in-a-hole

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 paste

  1. Beat the sweet and bitter almonds to a fine, smooth paste.

  2. Moisten the paste with water and mix in the white sugar until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray and place wafer paper on top.

  2. Shape the mixture into biscuits the size of a half-crown coin and place a dried cherry in the center of each.

  3. Sift sugar over the biscuits and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Once done, cut around the wafer paper but do not remove it.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Form the bulk of the paste, giving the biscuits their body and mild almond flavour.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharp, intense almond flavour that balances the sweetness.
White sugar
Sweetens the paste and contributes to its smooth, shapeable texture.

The step that matters

Moistening the paste. Add water gradually. Too much makes the almond paste slack, so the biscuits spread and lose their shape in the oven, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to shape.

“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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