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Salted Almonds

Salted almonds are blanched almonds fried with butter and lard, then drained and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Salted Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and dry them on two towels.

Fry

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the almonds and fry until delicately browned, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove the almonds with a spoon or small skimmer, taking up as little fat as possible.

Finish

  1. Drain the almonds on brown paper and sprinkle with salt.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main crisp texture and nutty flavour once fried and browned.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the almonds brown in the hot fat.
Lard
Conducts heat evenly and gives a stable frying fat that tolerates the heat well.

The step that matters

Remove the almonds with a spoon or small skimmer, taking up as little fat as possible.. Almonds keep browning from residual heat after leaving the pan, so removing them promptly prevents over-browning. Draining well keeps the finished nuts from tasting greasy and helps the salt stick.

“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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