Starbucks Almond Croissant

The Starbucks Almond Croissant costs £3.10 and carries 519 calories with 29g of fat, of which 16g is saturated. An all butter croissant with almond filling and flaked almonds on top.

At 519 calories it is the heaviest item in the whole breakfast category, ahead of the sausage sandwich at 495 and 105 above the plain croissant it is built from. 16g of saturated fat is 80 percent of an adult daily reference intake, the highest single figure on the Starbucks UK food menu.

Frangipane is what accounts for the difference, and its composition explains the numbers: ground almonds, butter, sugar and egg in roughly equal measure. A second helping of butter goes into something already a quarter butter by weight, which is why 105 calories of filling turns into a considerably worse nutritional profile than that sounds.

The tradition behind it is more practical than it looks on a menu. An almond croissant was invented as a way to use yesterday's croissants: a stale one is split, soaked in syrup, filled with frangipane and baked again, which rescues it entirely. That is also why it is the one pastry that genuinely improves on a day old croissant rather than simply surviving on one.

Flaked almonds on top are a fair guide to how the pastry was finished. Properly done they are pressed into frangipane spread over the surface and toast to a deep gold in the oven; scattered on loose they fall off in the bag and burn at the edges. The pastries that arrive with most of their almonds still attached were built the first way.

Sugar is 11g and protein 9.2g, the highest of the pastries thanks to the almonds. It lists egg, barley, almonds, wheat and milk as allergens. Prices reach £4.50 on delivery.