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Dessert

Nougat for Pieces Montees

Nougat made from almonds and powdered sugar, cooled on a marble slab.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Nougat for Pieces Montees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds in boiling water, then cut them into strips and dry them.

Make the nougat

  1. In a pan over heat, melt the powdered sugar, stirring until it turns light brown.

  2. Add the warm, dry almond strips to the melted sugar and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture onto an oiled marble slab and let it cool.

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
Provide the main bulk and crunch of the nougat as they are set in the caramel.
Powdered sugar
Melts and caramelizes into the brittle sugar base that binds the almonds together.

The step that matters

Stirring the sugar until light brown. Sugar melts first and then caramelizes; removing it from heat at the right light brown colour avoids a bitter, over-darkened flavour and keeps the sugar fluid enough to coat 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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