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Dessert

Salt Almonds

Roasted almonds coated with butter and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Salt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and dry them carefully.

  2. Spread the almonds on a tray or pan.

Toast and season

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat and stir in the almonds until they are slightly greasy.

  2. Place the almonds in a 300°F (150°C) oven until they turn pale yellow, stirring often.

  3. Remove from the oven and immediately sift the coarse sea salt over the hot almonds.

  4. Allow the almonds to cool, then gently sift off any excess salt.

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 + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
The main ingredient; drying them well lets the coating stick and the nuts crisp in the oven.
Butter
Adds a thin fat coating so the salt adheres to the almonds and they brown evenly.
Coarse sea salt
Provides the salty seasoning that clings to the warm, slightly greasy almond surface.

The step that matters

Sifting the salt over the hot almonds. Salt must go on immediately after the almonds leave the oven, while the surface is still warm and slightly greasy, so it sticks. Once the almonds cool, most of the salt will fall off.

“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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