Name: Almond Milk
Ingredients: ½ cup blanched sweet almonds; 2 cups boiling water; 1 teaspoon sugar

Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Almond Milk

Ingredients

½ cup blanched sweet almonds
2 cups boiling water
1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

Pound the almonds in a mortar until finely ground.
Add the boiling water to the ground almonds.
Stir in the sugar until dissolved.
Let the mixture steep for a few minutes, then strain to remove solids.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + 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

Blanched sweet almonds: Provide the flavor and fat that give the milk its body and richness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the nutty almond flavor.

“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.