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Dessert

Almond Paste

Almond paste is a sweet almond-based confection made with almonds, icing sugar, egg yolk, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Grind the almonds carefully.

  2. Add the icing sugar and the egg yolk.

  3. Mix well until fine.

  4. Add a few drops of rose water.

  5. Work the mixture on a baking board.

  6. Add more icing sugar until it resembles dough.

Finish and apply

  1. Roll out to the size of a cake.

  2. Brush the cake lightly with egg white before laying the paste on.

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. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the paste.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the paste and, with the almonds, gives it a fine, dough-like texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the ground almonds and sugar into a cohesive, pliable dough.

The step that matters

Add more icing sugar until it resembles dough. Too little sugar leaves the paste sticky and hard to roll, while too much makes it dry and crumbly. Adding sugar gradually lets you judge the texture by feel.

“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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