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Ratafia Drops

A confection of bitter and sweet almonds mixed with sugar and egg whites, formed into small balls and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar 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 ↓

Ratafia Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Blanch and grind the bitter and sweet almonds in a mortar.

  2. Mix in ½ pound of sifted sugar and the egg whites to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the paste into small balls, the size of a nutmeg.

  2. Place the balls on wafer paper and bake gently on tin plates.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bitter almonds
Provide the characteristic strong almond aroma and flavor of the drops.
Sweet almonds
Make up the bulk of the paste, giving body and a milder almond flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the drops and helps the paste hold together and brown lightly.
Egg whites
Bind the ground almonds and sugar into a paste that holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Bake gently on tin plates. Gentle heat dries the surface and sets the drops while keeping their shape and a pale color. Strong heat can scorch the outside before the centre sets, and the sugar in the almond paste browns quickly.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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