Name: Cream Almonds
Ingredients: 1 cup granulated sugar; 1 almond meat per ball; coarse granulated sugar for rolling

Why it works: Almond and meat work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 486 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 cup granulated sugar
1 almond meat per ball
coarse granulated sugar for rolling

Directions

Mold the sugar into balls.
Place an almond meat in the center of each ball.
Roll the balls in coarse granulated sugar.
Lay them on buttered paper until cold.

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 + meattop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together486 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,866 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).