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Dessert

Almond Nuts

A sweet almond confection made by blanching, bruising, mixing with flour and sugar, cooking, kneading, shaping, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Remove their skins.

  3. Bruise the almonds in a mortar with a little water.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the bruised almonds with 2 ounces of flour and 3 ounces of sifted sugar.

  2. Cook the mixture in a pan over low heat for a short time, then remove from heat.

  3. Knead on a floured surface with 2 ounces of sugar and 2 ounces of flour.

Shape and dry

  1. Cut the dough into small pieces.

  2. Shape the pieces into nut forms.

  3. Dry the shaped nuts in the oven on parchment paper.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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 bulk and nutty flavor of the dough.
Flour
Binds the ground almonds so the dough holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown lightly while drying.

The step that matters

Cooking the almond mixture over low heat. Heating the mixture gently for a short time sets the flour and softens the almond paste so it kneads well. Too much heat or time can scorch the sugar and dry the dough, making it crumbly and bitter.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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