Skip to main content
Dessert

Another Way to Make Almond Paste

A sweet paste made from blanched bitter and sweet almonds mixed with honey and flavored with orange‑flower or rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Almond Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Finely pound and mix the bitter and sweet almonds with honey.

  2. Add enough orange-flower or rose water to achieve a smooth consistency.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the mixture into small pots.

  2. Pour a little more orange-flower or rose water on top.

  3. Seal the pots tightly with 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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Honey + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Make up the bulk of the paste and give it a rich, fatty body.
Bitter almonds
Add a strong, distinctive almond aroma and flavor to the paste.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps bind the ground almonds together.

The step that matters

Adding the flower or rose water. Add the water gradually and stop once the paste is smooth. Ground almonds absorb liquid unevenly, so too much water can leave the paste loose and hard to shape.

“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.

More almond paste recipes

Tartlets 6Bonbons 3Cake 3Filling 3 See all 105 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes