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Dessert

Almond Shortbread

A shortbread made with ground sweet almonds, sugar, flour, butter, egg yolks, and a touch of ratafia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Shortbread

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 the dough

  1. Ensure the ground almonds are fresh.

  2. Mix the ground almonds, flour, and sugar together.

  3. Carefully add a few drops of ratafia. Mix thoroughly.

  4. Make a space in the center and add the egg yolks.

  5. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture.

  6. Combine until a firm paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough until it is a quarter of an inch thick. The dough should resemble cream-colored satin.

  2. Cut into small squares with a sharp knife and pinch the edges of each square.

  3. Place a split half of a blanched almond in the center.

  4. Butter baking tins.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a fine pale yellow tint is achieved.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ground sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the shortbread.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, helping the dough hold a crumbly, short texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness and color.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled and cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pale yellow surface brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a fine pale yellow tint is achieved.. Shortbread is delicate and browns quickly at the edges. Removing it once only a faint pale yellow tint shows keeps it tender and prevents bitterness from over-browning.

“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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