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Dessert

Almond Souffles

A sweet almond pastry made by pounding almonds with sugar and egg whites, rolled, cut, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Souffles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the paste

  1. Scald, skin, wash, wipe, and dry the almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds with 2 oz of the sugar, adding some egg whites until smooth.

  3. Incorporate the remaining sugar into the paste with clean hands, keeping it stiff.

  4. Roll out the paste with sugar to ¼ inch thick.

Cut and bake

  1. Spread icing evenly on the paste and cut out shapes using cutters or a knife.

  2. Place the cut shapes on baking sheets lined with wafer paper.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300 °F (150 °C) until very light in color.

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 body and nutty flavor of the paste.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, more aromatic almond flavor to the paste.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it firm into a stiff, workable dough.
Egg whites
Bind the ground almonds and sugar into a smooth, cohesive paste.

The step that matters

Baking until very light in color. Sugar and proteins brown quickly at high heat, so a slow oven and close watching keep the shapes pale and dry rather than darkened or hard.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, 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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