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 White
Ingredients
Directions
Boil 1 pound of sugar with a little water until it reaches the barley sugar stage.
Add the almonds and stir until they are dry.
Separate the almonds and remove them from the pan.
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.
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sugar
- Melts and caramelizes into a brittle coating that hardens around the almonds as it cools.
- Almonds
- Provide the crunchy, nutty core that the sugar coating encases.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to the barley sugar stage. Sugar must reach the correct temperature to set hard and brittle when cooled. Undercooked sugar stays sticky and fails to coat the almonds properly, while overcooked sugar darkens and turns 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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