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Dessert

Almond Biscuits

Almond biscuits are small cakes made from blanched almonds, lemon peel, eggs, sugar, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the paste

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet almonds.

  2. Grate the lemon peel finely and add it to the almonds.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them in.

  4. Combine well to form a stiff paste, adding a little water if needed.

Shape and top

  1. Roll out the mixture thin and cut into small cakes with a pastry cutter.

  2. Chop the additional sweet almonds finely and add the chopped almonds to the mixture.

  3. Mix the chopped almonds with the sifted sugar and beaten egg white to form a paste.

  4. Sprinkle this mixture over the cakes.

  5. Sprinkle sugar over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake on buttered tins in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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 rich flavour of the biscuit.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and add structure as they set.
Sifted sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping form a crisp, browned surface.
Egg white
Binds the chopped almond topping so it adheres to the cakes.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff paste. If the paste is too wet it will spread and lose its shape in the oven. Add water only a little at a time, since almond paste can quickly become too loose to hold a cut shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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