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Burnt Almonds

A confection of almonds toasted in clarified syrup until caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift all the dust from the almonds.

  2. In a pan, combine 1 pint of clarified syrup for each pound of almonds.

  3. Place the pan on the fire with the almonds.

  4. Boil the mixture until it reaches the small ball stage.

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 + 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
Provide the nut body and flavor that the sugar coating surrounds.
Clarified syrup
Forms a sugar coating that hardens around the almonds as the syrup cooks and cools.

The step that matters

Boiling to the small ball stage. The small ball stage marks a specific sugar concentration. Stopping too early leaves the coating sticky, while cooking too long makes it dark, hard, or burnt. Sugar concentration controls how the coating sets on the 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.

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