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Almond Biscuits

Almond biscuits made from blanched almonds, sugar, flour, eggs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds in a mortar, gradually adding fine sugar.

  2. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes, then add flour and egg yolks, and mix well.

  3. Whip the egg whites to a froth and fold them into the almond mixture.

Bake

  1. Grease paper moulds and fill them with the biscuit mixture.

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

  3. Bake in a cool oven until 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. 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. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the biscuit's structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the mixture and help it rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps give a tender, crisp texture.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives lightness. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so the biscuits bake up dense rather than 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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