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Almond Comfits

Almond comfits are almonds coated in a sugar and gum arabic syrup, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Almond Comfits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Clean the almonds and blanch them in hot water to remove the peels.

  2. Drop the blanched almonds into cold water.

  3. Remove the almonds from the cold water and dry them on a sieve.

  4. Place the almonds in the oven to dry thoroughly.

Make the gum and syrup

  1. Dissolve the gum-arabic in hot water.

  2. Strain the dissolved gum through a fine sieve.

  3. Boil the clarified sugar in a syrup to the 'Thread' stage.

  4. Mix in a little of the dissolved gum for consistency.

  5. Keep the sugar syrup warm on a slow fire without boiling.

Coat the almonds

  1. Clean the comfit pan.

  2. Add the dried almonds to the pan.

  3. Pour two tablespoons of gum over the almonds, distributing it evenly.

  4. Dry the almonds thoroughly.

  5. Apply a second charge of gum to the almonds and dry again.

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 the sugar coating builds up around.
Clarified loaf sugar
Forms the crisp, sweet sugar shell that surrounds each almond.
Gum-arabic
Binds the sugar layers together so the coating adheres and dries smoothly.

The step that matters

Drying between gum applications. Each gum layer must dry thoroughly before the next is added. If the almonds are still wet, the coating can clump, crack or dissolve, leaving an uneven shell.

“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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