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Dessert

Burnt Almonds Red

A confection of burnt almonds colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond 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 ↓

Burnt Almonds Red

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Boil 1½ pounds of lump sugar with ½ cup of water until it reaches nearly barley sugar consistency.

  2. Add 1 pound of Jordan almonds.

  3. Stir until the almonds just burn.

  4. Remove the almonds.

  5. Break the almonds apart.

Coat and dry

  1. Boil the remaining sugar with 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water.

  2. Once the mixture reaches barley sugar consistency, add cochineal for coloring.

  3. Add the almonds back to the mixture.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir until dry.

  6. Pick the almonds apart.

  7. Lay them on a sieve.

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. 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

Jordan almonds
Form the nut centre that is coated in caramelised sugar, giving the candy its crunch.
Lump sugar
Forms the caramel base that hardens into the crisp, glossy coating on the almonds.
Sugar
Adds more sugar to the syrup, building the coating and sweetness.
Cochineal
Colours the sugar coating red.

The step that matters

Stir until the almonds just burn. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes barley sugar stage, so the almonds can scorch before they are evenly toasted. Pulling them at the right colour keeps the flavour pleasantly caramelised rather than bitter.

“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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