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Dessert

German Almond Cookies

German almond cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, rosewater, vanilla, sherry, lemon, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

German Almond Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs, flour, rosewater, vanilla, sherry, lemon rind, and lemon juice, and mix well.

  3. Fold in the chopped almonds.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out as thin as the blade of a knife.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and bake.

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. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender body and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for a fluffy base and adds sweetness and crisp browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with the eggs and fats.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor throughout the dough.
Lemon
Rind and juice add aroma and a bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Roll the dough out as thin as the blade of a knife.. Thin dough bakes through and crisps evenly; thicker dough stays soft in the middle and may brown unevenly before it sets.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, flour, vanilla, sherry, wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, vanilla, sherry, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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