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Dessert

Common Burnt Almonds

A confection of almonds caramelized in sugar syrup until the mixture forms a small ball or cracks the almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Common Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar and almonds

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until the mixture is near boiling.

  3. Add the almonds and boil until the mixture reaches a small ball stage or the almonds crack.

Finish and separate

  1. Remove from heat and stir with a spatula until the sugar grains become nearly powdery.

  2. Transfer to a sieve and separate the lumps.

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

Raw sugar
Dissolves into syrup, then recrystallizes as the sugar coating that turns powdery on the almonds.
Raw almonds
Provide the nut base and crunch that the sugar coating surrounds.

The step that matters

Boil the almonds until the ball stage or cracking. Sugar concentration decides the final texture. Stopping too early leaves the coating wet and sticky, while cooking too long can darken and burn the sugar and make it 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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