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Burnt Almonds

Almonds coated in a burnt sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 290°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sugar syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the almonds.

  4. Cook over low heat until the nuts stop cracking.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir until the sugar granulates.

  7. Sift to remove loose sugar.

  8. Return the sugar to the pot with a little water to dissolve it.

  9. Cook to a soft ball stage.

Coat the almonds

  1. Add the almonds again.

  2. Stir until the sugar granulates.

  3. Sift off loose sugar.

  4. Add enough sugar to make 6 pounds and water to dissolve.

  5. Color with burnt sugar color.

  6. Cook to a soft ball stage again.

  7. Add almonds and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

  8. Heat dissolved gum arabic until boiling.

  9. Remove from heat and add almonds.

  10. Stir to coat the almonds with gum.

  11. Spread them on a tray to dry.

  12. For a hard coating, cook the sugar to a hard crack stage (290°F) instead of soft ball.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Jordan almonds
Form the centre that the sugar shell builds up around.
Sugar
Forms the crystallised shell that gives the nuts their crunchy coating.
Gum arabic
Binds the sugar coating to the almonds and helps it stay smooth.
Burnt sugar color
Gives the coating its brown colour and a toasted sugar flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring until the sugar granulates. Stirring a cooked sugar syrup encourages crystals to form, which turns it opaque and sandy. If it is stirred too early or too late the coating can clump or stay glassy, so the cook must watch for the moment the syrup turns cloudy and grainy.

“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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