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Almond Paste

A sweet almond paste made with almonds, egg yolks, flour, butter, and sugar, shaped and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and finely pound the almonds.

  2. In a bowl, combine the almonds, egg yolks, flour, oiled butter, and sifted sugar. Mix thoroughly until it forms a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the paste and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake until golden, then cool.

Finish

  1. Fill with creams or jellies.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Jordan almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the paste.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste together.
Flour
Adds body so the paste holds its shape when rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Mixing to a stiff paste. The paste must be mixed thoroughly so the fat, egg and ground almonds combine evenly. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of dry flour or greasy patches, which make the dough crumbly or cause uneven browning and texture after baking.

“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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