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Dessert

Yellow Almond Sweetmeats

A sweet confection of almond paste shaped into small figures, baked until golden and glazed with orange-flavored syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Yellow Almond Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds and wash them in cold water.

  2. Dry the almonds completely.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the almonds with enough egg yolks to form a stiff paste.

  2. Mix in the powdered sugar and grated lemon rinds.

  3. Knead the paste on a sugared surface.

  4. Shape the paste into figures about the size of macaroons.

  5. Place the figures on white paper on an iron plate.

Bake and finish

  1. Fry the figures in a moderately hot oven (350°F/175°C) until deep yellow.

  2. Boil sugar in orange flower water for decoration.

  3. Brush the syrup over the warm sweetmeats for added fragrance.

  4. Once cooled, remove from paper and store in glasses for serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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 sweetmeats their body and nutty flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the ground almonds into a stiff paste that holds its shape.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it firm up for shaping.
Lemon rinds
Add aromatic citrus flavour to the paste.

The step that matters

Fry the figures until deep yellow. The paste is rich in sugar and egg, so it browns quickly. Watching the colour and oven heat keeps the outside set and golden without scorching before the centre firms up.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon, syrup, orange):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, syrup, orange. 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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