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Dessert

Everton Toffee

A caramelized sugar toffee with blanched almonds, flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Everton Toffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan to prevent boiling over.

  2. Add the sugar, water, and grated rind of ¼ lemon; bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Test by dropping a little into very cold water; it should harden quickly.

  5. Once boiling ceases, stir in the strained juice of ½ lemon.

Set and finish

  1. Blanch the almonds and cut them in halves.

  2. Butter a shallow tin and lay the almonds flat side down.

  3. Pour the toffee over the almonds.

  4. Cut into squares before it cools or break into pieces after it hardens.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel-like flavour and the body of the toffee.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the toffee a smooth, tender bite.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and its rind adds aroma.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour that contrasts with the chewy toffee.

The step that matters

Boiling time and the cold-water test. Sugar syrup sets according to how far its water has boiled off. Too little boiling leaves a soft, sticky toffee, while too much makes it hard and brittle. Testing a drop in cold water shows when it has reached the right stage.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, almond. 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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