Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Ornamental Caramel Basket Filled with Caramel Fruits
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar
Boil the sugar until it reaches the crack stage.
Cool the sugar by dipping the pan in cold water.
Shape the basket
Rub the outside of the mould with oil of almonds.
Use a pointed wooden tool to draw the sugar in narrow threads on the mould.
Cross the threads diagonally with other rows of spun sugar to hold them in place.
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.
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Cooked to the crack stage, it sets into hard, brittle threads that hold the basket's shape.
- Oil of almonds
- A thin coating on the mould that helps the set sugar release without sticking, and adds aroma.
The step that matters
Cool the sugar before drawing threads. Cooling the pan in cold water thickens the sugar so it can be pulled into fine strands. Sugar that is still too hot stays runny, spreads flat and does not form threads that hold their shape.
“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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