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Dessert

Almond Drops

Almond Drops are small sweet pastries made from flour, almonds, sugar, eggs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Almond Drops

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 dough

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface.

  2. Add the sweet and bitter almonds, pounding them with a little egg white.

  3. Mix in the sugar, egg yolks, and salt to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into small rolls and cut into pieces the size of a small nutmeg.

  2. Roll each piece into a ball and place them ½ inch apart on baking sheets lined with paper.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 20 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Provides the base structure that holds the almond paste together as it bakes.
Sweet almonds
Supply the main almond flavour and body of the paste.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharper almond aroma that deepens the flavour of the paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, binding the paste and giving a tender crumb.
Egg white
Acts as a binder that helps the ground almonds stick together into a paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the almonds with egg white. Almonds must be worked into a smooth, cohesive paste; too little binder leaves the mixture crumbly, while the right amount lets the pieces hold their shape through baking.

“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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