Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Paste

A sweet almond paste made with ground almonds, sugars, vanilla, brandy, lemon zest, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Almond Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the ground almonds, icing sugar, caster sugar, vanilla essence, brandy, lemon zest, ratafia essence, orange flower water, and eggs.

  2. Combine until you form a stiff paste.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a mortar and pound thoroughly until well blended.

  4. Add any additional liquid gradually if the mixture is too dry.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavour of the paste.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the paste and blends smoothly into the almonds.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the paste body.
Egg yolks or whole eggs
Bind the almonds and sugar into a stiff, cohesive paste.

The step that matters

Pounding in the mortar. Thorough pounding breaks down the almonds and sugar so the paste blends evenly. Adding liquid gradually matters because too much at once makes the paste slack and hard to rescue, while a dry mix will crumble.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, vanilla, brandy, orange, 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.

More almond paste recipes

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes