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Dessert

Almond Drops

A buttery almond-flavored cookie made by mixing butter, flour, caster sugar, eggs, and almond flavoring, then baking until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond 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 Drops

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Make a well in the mixture and add the caster sugar, eggs, and almond flavoring, then mix into a good-sized dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into strips and cut with a knife.

  2. Place on slightly greased baking sheets with the cut side facing up.

  3. Press down slightly with the palm of your hand.

  4. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly golden.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and short rather than tough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the baked drops.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the drops brown lightly in the oven.
Almond flavouring
Gives the drops their characteristic almond aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Bake in a cool oven until lightly golden. A low oven dries the drops gently and lets them set evenly. Sugar browns quickly at higher heat, so a hotter oven can scorch the bottoms before the centres are cooked through.

“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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