Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Almond Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and boil until it reaches the feather stage.
Add a few spots of yellow coloring.
Stir in the ground almonds until well combined.
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.
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Loaf sugar
- Dissolves and boils into a syrup that sets to form the icing's structure and sweetness.
- Ground almonds
- Add body, flavor and a thick texture to the syrup as it is stirred in.
The step that matters
Boiling to the feather stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct concentration before the almonds are added. If it is undercooked, the icing stays runny and will not set firmly; if overcooked, it turns grainy and hardens too quickly. The feather stage is a visual test where a drop of syrup drawn through the fingers forms fine threads.
“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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