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Dessert

Italian Sandwiches

A sweet pastry made from a stiff dough of egg yolk, flour, butter, sugar, and cinnamon, layered with an almond paste and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond 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 ↓

Italian Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the paste

  1. Beat the egg yolk with cold water until combined.

  2. Mix in baked flour, butter, sifted sugar, and cinnamon to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste thinly and cut into strips 1 inch wide and 3-4 inches long.

  4. Harden the strips in a cool, well-ventilated place for 4-5 hours.

Fill and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth with powdered sugar.

  2. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds, then mix with the egg froth to form a smooth paste.

  3. Spread half the strips with the almond mixture and cover with the remaining strips.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until pale brown, about 16-18 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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

Baked flour
Provides the body and structure that holds the stiff paste together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crumbly texture in the baked strips.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the almond mixture and help it set airy.
Sweet almonds
Form the bulk of the filling, adding nutty flavor and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and promotes gentle browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until pale brown only. Sugar and proteins brown quickly at high heat, so the strips can darken and turn bitter if left too long. Pulling them when just pale brown keeps the flavor sweet and the texture crisp.

“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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