Name: Majesty Biscuits
Ingredients: 2 ounces bitter almonds; 2 ounces sweet almonds; 1 pound flour; 1 pound butter; 1 pound crushed sugar

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 ↓

Majesty Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Blanch and pound the bitter and sweet almonds until fine.
Rub the almonds into the flour and butter until well combined.
Add the crushed sugar and mix thoroughly.

Bake

Shape the mixture into biscuits and 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.

Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Bitter almonds: Add a distinctive, slightly bitter almond aroma and flavour to the biscuits.
Sweet almonds: Provide the bulk of the almond flavour and fine texture once pounded.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Butter: Adds fat for a tender, crumbly texture and helps the biscuits brown.
Crushed sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown as they bake.

“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.