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Dessert

Almond Nuts

A baked almond cookie made with eggs, sugar, flour, ground almonds, and butter.

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 Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Weigh the eggs and use the same weight of sifted sugar.

  2. Use two-thirds the weight of the eggs in flour.

Mix

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Mix the sugar, flour, and ground almonds with the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Grease wafer or writing paper with fresh butter.

  2. Drop the mixture onto the paper in rows using a teaspoon.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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. 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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, giving the mixture lift and a light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Flour
Sets during baking to give the cookies their body and shape.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a tender, slightly rich texture.

The step that matters

Folding the dry ingredients into the egg whites. The whipped whites hold the air that makes these cookies rise. Mixing gently and only until combined keeps that air in. Overmixing deflates the foam and leaves dense, flat results.

“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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