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Almond Paste. Pate d’Amandes.

A sweet almond paste made with almonds, butter, water, egg white, lemon juice, and sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Paste. Pate d’Amandes.

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Blanch and beat the almonds in a mortar, adding a drop of water and a drop of egg white intermittently.

  2. Add a little lemon juice to whiten the mixture.

  3. When smooth, mix in the sifted sugar.

Cook and store

  1. Transfer the mixture to a sweetmeat pan and place it over low heat.

  2. Stir until it no longer sticks to your fingers.

  3. Dust a surface with sifted sugar and roll the paste on it.

  4. Once cold, wrap it in white paper for storage.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and flavor of the paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps bind the paste as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother texture.
Egg white
Helps bind the almond mixture together.

The step that matters

Stir until it no longer sticks to your fingers. Cooking over low heat drives off moisture so the paste firms up. Stopping too early leaves it sticky and hard to shape, while cooking too long can make it dry and crumbly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, butter, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, egg, sugar. 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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