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Almond Biscuits

Almond biscuits made with blanched almonds, sugar, flour, egg yolks, and whipped egg whites, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds in a mortar, gradually adding fine sugar.

  2. Beat the almond mixture for 15 minutes with flour, egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Grease paper moulds and fill them with the biscuit mixture.

  2. Dust with equal parts flour and powdered sugar.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until golden.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the biscuit.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the mixture and give it rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps the mixture hold air.
Flour
Gives the biscuits light structure so they hold their shape.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the biscuits dense and flat instead of light.

“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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