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Dessert

Brown Almond Bar

A sweet almond confection made by boiling sugar with cream of tartar, browning almonds, and setting the mixture between iron bars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nuts work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 394 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Brown Almond Bar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nut brittle

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar and cream of tartar.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the almond nuts after removing shells and dusting them.

  3. Stir slowly, washing down the sides of the pot until the nuts are browned to your liking.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture between iron bars to a thickness of about 1 inch.

  2. Once cool enough to handle, cut into bars using a batch knife and mallet.

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 + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Melts and caramelizes to form the crisp, sweet brittle matrix.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the sugar syrup, helping prevent crystallization for a smooth texture.
Almond nuts
Provide crunch and nutty flavor, and brown in the hot syrup.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling syrup. Washing down the pot sides prevents sugar crystals from forming and falling back into the syrup, which can make the brittle grainy. Stirring slowly keeps the nuts from scorching before they reach the desired browning.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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