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Dessert

Neapolitan Paste

A sweet almond paste made with flour, sugar, butter, lemon rind, and egg yolks, baked into squares or rounds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond 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 ↓

Neapolitan Paste

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. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds to a smooth paste, adding a little cold water to prevent oiling.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, butter, lemon rind, and salt. Stir in the egg yolks until well mixed.

  3. Work the mixture into a smooth paste and set aside in a cool place for about 1.5 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the paste thinly and cut into squares or rounds.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crumbly texture.
Sweet almonds
Form the paste's body and nutty flavor, the base of the dough.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness and color through fat and emulsifiers.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the dough and aids browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Pound the almonds to a smooth paste with a little cold water. Almonds turn oily if they overheat or are worked dry, which makes the paste greasy and grainy. A small amount of cold water keeps the oils emulsified and the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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