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Dessert

Burnt Almonds

A sweet, caramelized almond confection made by boiling sugar and water, then roasting almonds in the syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Clean the almonds thoroughly.

  2. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  3. Boil the mixture until clear and thick.

  4. Add the almonds and stir with a wooden spoon until they crack.

  5. Remove from heat but continue stirring until dry.

  6. Place almonds in a wire sieve and sift off excess sugar.

Coat and finish

  1. Boil the remaining sugar with a little water and cinnamon, if desired.

  2. Optionally, add fruit coloring to the sugar during the second boiling.

  3. Add the almonds back to the boiling sugar and stir until completely dry.

  4. Remove from heat and pack the almonds in a glass jar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooked sugar coating crystallises around.
Sugar
Forms the crisp, opaque sugar coating that turns dry and crunchy as it cools.

The step that matters

Add the almonds and stir until they crack. Stirring the almonds into the boiling syrup until the sugar turns opaque and crystallises around them is what creates the sandy, crackled coating. Stirring too little leaves a smooth, sticky shell, while stopping too late can scorch the sugar.

“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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