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Dessert

Nougats a LA Française

A sweet confection of caramelized sugar and toasted almonds, topped with pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nougats a LA Française

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds and cut each in half.

  2. Place the almonds on a baking sheet in a 300°F (150°C) oven, moving them occasionally until lightly browned.

Make the nougat

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water, and boil until it reaches a caramel color.

  2. Add the almonds to the caramel and stir gently with a spatula to coat them evenly.

  3. Pour the nougat mixture onto a lightly buttered baking sheet, spreading it quickly.

  4. Sprinkle with coarse sugar and pistachio fillets.

Shape and cut

  1. Shape the nougat into a rectangle, 8 inches long and 6 inches wide, ensuring even thickness.

  2. Trim the edges and cut into strips, then into 15 equal pieces.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pistachio + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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
Provide the main nutty body and bulk of the nougat, held together by the set sugar.
Sugar
Forms the caramel that hardens as it cools, binding the almonds into a firm, brittle candy.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to caramel. Sugar syrup darkens quickly near the end of cooking, so it can go from amber to burnt in seconds. Removing it at the right colour keeps the nougat flavourful rather than bitter and ensures it sets firm.

“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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