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Dessert

Almond Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with almonds, flour, sugar, and eggs, baked until golden.

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 Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds, sprinkling with fine sugar.

  3. Beat the almond mixture for 15 minutes with flour, egg yolks, and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Whip the egg whites to a froth and fold into the mixture.

  2. Prepare paper molds, butter them, and fill with the biscuit mixture.

  3. Sprinkle equal amounts of flour and powdered sugar on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) until golden brown.

  2. Remove biscuits from the molds once done.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main flavor and bulk of the biscuit mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add lightness and help the biscuits rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the almond mixture together.
Flour
Gives the biscuits structure so they hold their shape.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps the almonds break down when pounded.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the biscuits dense instead of light.

“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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