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Dessert

Almond Taut

A pastry made from sugar, sweet almonds, and flour, formed into a dough, rolled, shaped, and baked.

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 Taut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Peel and finely bruise the almonds in a mortar.

  2. Mix the bruised almonds with the sugar to form a smooth paste.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a baking board and knead in the flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to a thickness of 1 inch.

  2. Shape it neatly, prick the surface, and bake it.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 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 flavour and oil that give the dough its rich, nutty body.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps bind the crushed almonds into a smooth paste.
Flour
Adds structure so the dough holds its shape when rolled and baked.

The step that matters

Knead in the flour. Once the flour is added, too much kneading develops gluten, which makes the baked dough tough and dense instead of tender. Work it only until evenly combined.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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