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Dessert

Canary-bird Paste

A sweet paste made from blanched almonds, pea meal, butter, honey, and optional saffron and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Canary-bird Paste

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the blanched sweet almonds, pea meal, and fresh unsalted butter in a bowl.

  2. Add honey gradually until the mixture forms a stiff paste.

  3. Press the mixture through a colander or large sieve to granulate it.

  4. If desired, add saffron and the yolks of 2 eggs for extra flavor. Mix well to incorporate any additional ingredients.

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 + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Almond + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Honey + saffrontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blanched sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the paste.
Pea meal
Adds bulk and dry structure to the paste.
Fresh unsalted butter
Adds fat, making the paste softer and richer in texture.
Honey
Binds the mixture into a stiff paste and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the mixture through a colander or sieve breaks it into fine, even granules. If the paste is not stiff enough before pressing, it will clump or pass through unevenly, so the honey must be added gradually and the texture checked first.

Swap the saffron

The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, butter, honey, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Saffronthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, honey, egg. 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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