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Dessert

Cinnamon Sticks

A sweet, almond-flavored biscuit made from egg whites, sugar, ground almonds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cinnamon Sticks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Fold in the ground almonds and cinnamon.

Shape and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture onto baking sheets in long, narrow strips about the size of your thumb.

  2. Bake carefully until set.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the batter its light structure and lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Ground almonds
Provide body and a nutty flavour, forming the chewy bulk of the sticks.
Cinnamon
Adds the main aroma and flavour of the sticks.

The step that matters

Bake carefully until set. Whipped egg whites can collapse or over-brown if overbaked, while underbaking leaves the centre soft. Baking until just set keeps the sticks intact and evenly textured.

“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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