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Dessert

Salt Almonds

Roasted almonds seasoned with olive oil and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salt Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the almonds to blanch them.

  2. Rub the brown skin off with a rough cloth.

  3. Let the blanched almonds dry completely.

Season

  1. Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the almonds and let them stand for 1 hour.

  2. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt over the almonds and mix thoroughly.

  3. Spread the almonds on a flat tin pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until they are a delicate brown.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Provide the crunchy body and nutty flavour that the whole snack is built on.
Olive oil
Coats the almonds so the salt sticks and the nuts brown evenly with a richer mouthfeel.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the nuts and adds a crisp, sharp contrast to their sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until a delicate brown. Nuts darken quickly in the oven, and browning from the Maillard reaction keeps going from residual heat after removal. Pulling them when they are just delicately brown prevents bitter, scorched flavour.

“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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