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Italian Confectioner

A confection of blanched almonds coated with gum and syrup, dried to a firm consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Italian Confectioner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gum and syrup

  1. Dissolve gum Senegal in water and strain through a silk sieve.

  2. Boil syrup until it reaches a strong thread consistency.

  3. Add one tablespoon of gum Senegal to the syrup.

  4. Place the syrup on low heat to maintain an even temperature.

Coat the almonds

  1. Put blanched almonds in a comfit pan and coat them with gum twice, drying well each time.

  2. Add syrup in six increments, increasing the amount each time.

  3. For the eighth charge, mix half gum and half syrup.

  4. Rub almonds with your left hand to prevent sticking.

  5. Sift every tenth charge to remove sugar dust.

  6. Ensure each charge is dried well to keep the almonds white.

Dry and finish

  1. When the comfits reach the desired size, transfer them to a sieve and dry them in the stove overnight.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Syrup + almondtop 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
Form the core of each comfit, which is built up in layers of sugar coating.
Fine loaf sugar
Forms the crisp, sweet outer shell as it crystallises layer by layer over the almond.
Gum senegal
Binds the sugar layers and helps each coat adhere smoothly to the almond.
Syrup
Supplies the sugar that builds up the coating as it dries on each almond.

The step that matters

Drying each charge well. If a coating is not fully dry before the next charge, moisture gets trapped, the layers can crack or stick, and the almonds may lose their white colour.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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