Skip to main content
Dessert

Burnt Almonds, Red

A confection of almonds coated in a caramelized syrup tinted with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and syrup work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 746 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Sift the dust from the almonds.

  2. Boil the syrup in a pan until it reaches almost caramel consistency.

  3. Add ½ cup of cochineal to the syrup.

Coat the almonds

  1. Quickly add the almonds and stir until they cool.

  2. Place the almonds in a sieve and break apart any that stick together.

  3. Boil another batch of syrup as before.

  4. Once cooled, separate the almonds to ensure they are coated in sugar.

  5. Adjust the cochineal in the last coat for a fine color.

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 + syruptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the crunchy core that the sugar shell builds up around.
Syrup
Hardens into a crisp sugar shell as it cools on the almonds.
Cochineal
Colours the sugar coating a deep red.

The step that matters

Stirring the almonds until they cool. Sugar syrup cools and crystallises quickly; if the almonds are not kept moving, the coating clumps together and forms uneven, sticky lumps instead of separate, evenly coated almonds.

“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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes