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Dessert

Almond Icing

A sweet almond paste used as icing for cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Blanch the almonds and grind them using a meat chopper or nut grinder until they form a paste.

  2. Add the unbeaten yolk of egg, bitter almond flavoring, and gradually mix in the icing sugar until the mixture is as stiff as dough.

Shape the icing

  1. Dredge a pastry board with icing sugar, then toss the mixture onto it and roll or pat it out to the desired thickness.

  2. Cut the icing into shapes as desired.

Apply to the cake

  1. Moisten the cake with cold water, press the icing onto it, and let it stand for 24 hours before covering with additional icing.

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 + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled almonds
Ground into a paste that forms the body of the icing.
Egg yolk
Binds the ground almonds and sugar together and adds richness to the paste.
Icing sugar
Stiffens the paste into a dough and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the icing sugar. Icing sugar must be added gradually so the mixture stiffens evenly into a dough. Adding it all at once can leave dry, crumbly patches or an overly stiff paste that cracks when rolled.

“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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