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To Colour Almond Comfits

Almond comfits are almonds coated with gum, starch, and boiled sugar, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar 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 ↓

To Colour Almond Comfits

Ingredients

Directions

Coat the almonds

  1. Heat the almonds in a pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of gum.

  3. Stir until it dries on the almonds.

  4. Dredge in a little starch powder for another coating.

  5. Use a beading funnel.

  6. Coat the almonds with boiled sugar and gum.

  7. Separate the almonds.

  8. Let them dry on a cane sieve.

Build up the coating

  1. Repeat the process of adding sugar, starch, and gum five more times.

  2. Clean the pan each time.

  3. Add food coloring during the last two coatings.

Dry and whiten

  1. Dry the comfits at a very slow heat until the next day.

  2. Let them dry again to whiten.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Almonds
Form the core that each layer of sugar and starch builds up around.
Gum
Binds the starch and sugar so each coating adheres to the almond.
Starch powder
Dusts the sticky layers so they separate and build up without clumping.
Boiled sugar
Forms the hard, crisp outer shell of each comfit as it dries.

The step that matters

Dry the comfits at a very slow heat. Sugar that dries too fast can crack or become cloudy, and heat that is too high can melt or darken the sugar shell. Slow, gentle drying lets the layers harden evenly and stay smooth.

“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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