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DeEvVILED Almonds

Deviled almonds are fried almonds coated with cayenne pepper and salt.

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 ↓

DeEvVILED Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Blanch and dry the Jordan almonds.

  2. Fry the almonds in butter until nicely browned.

  3. Place the fried almonds in a sieve.

Season and serve

  1. Sprinkle with a mixture of two-thirds cayenne pepper and one-third salt.

  2. Shake to evenly coat the almonds.

  3. Serve hot.

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).

  2. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Jordan almonds
Provide the crunchy, nut-based body that the coating clings to.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and rich flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds the spicy heat that defines the deviled coating.

The step that matters

Fry the almonds until nicely browned. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness, so the almonds must be well dried after blanching. Water slows browning and softens the crunch, while overheating scorches the butter and the nut before the flavour develops.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Lima beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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