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Dessert

Almond Cream Biscuits

Almond cream biscuits are small biscuits made with egg yolks, flour, butter, sugar, cream, blanched almonds, and topped with coarse sugar.

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, flour, butter, sugar, and cream into a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut it into desired shapes.

Bake

  1. Brush the tops with a little egg yolk, then sprinkle with coarse sugar and chopped almonds.

  2. Bake until light brown.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness, and their yolk brushed on top helps the tops brown.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown in the oven.
Cream
Adds moisture so the stiff paste holds together.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and crunch to the topping.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Biscuits continue to darken from residual heat after leaving the oven, and the sugar in the topping browns quickly. Pulling them when they are light brown keeps them from turning bitter or dry.

“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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