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Dessert

Irish Rock

A sweet almond confection made with butter, powdered sugar, sweet and bitter almonds, and brandy, shaped like an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Irish Rock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the salt from the butter and beat it with the powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Blanch the sweet almonds and the bitter almonds, then pound them in a mortar, reserving some sweet almonds for decoration.

Make and shape

  1. Add the butter and sugar mixture to the pounded almonds and pound until smooth and white.

  2. Once firm, mold the mixture into a large egg-like shape and stick it full of almond pieces.

Decorate and serve

  1. Place it on a glass dish and decorate with green sweetmeats and a sprig of myrtle or other green fruits.

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

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

  2. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, firm body to the paste.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and blends smoothly with the butter.
Sweet almonds
Form the main almond base and give the paste its texture.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharp, aromatic almond flavour in small amounts.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the almond paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the butter and sugar into the almonds. The mixture must be pounded until smooth and white so the fat and sugar are evenly distributed through the almonds. Uneven blending leaves greasy or gritty patches and a crumbly shape that will not hold when moulded.

“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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