Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Pralines
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the nuts
Rub the nuts in a cloth to remove dust.
Combine nuts, sugar, and water in a non-stick saucepan over heat.
When the nuts start to sizzle, remove from heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar resembles white sand.
Make the sugar coating
Remove half the sugar and return the other half with water to the heat.
Boil until it has a slight caramel aroma, then add the nuts.
Remove from heat and stir until the nuts are coated in sugar.
Separate and set
Place the nuts on paper, separating any that are stuck together.
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.
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds or hazelnuts or pistachios
- Form the body of the praline, adding crunch and toasted nutty flavor.
- Sugar
- Melts, then recrystallizes into a crisp, sandy coating around each nut.
The step that matters
Boil the sugar only until it smells slightly of caramel. Sugar darkens quickly near the caramel stage. Stopping too early leaves a syrup that won't crystallize into a sandy coating, while going too far turns it bitter and dark.
“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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