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Nougat or French Almond Rock

A hard almond confection made by roasting almonds, boiling sugar with vinegar, and spreading the mixture onto a slab.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Nougat or French Almond Rock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds and dry them thoroughly on a cloth.

  2. Heat the almonds in an oven at 400°F (200°C) until they begin to turn yellow, watching closely to prevent burning.

Make the brittle

  1. Boil the sugar in a pot until it reaches the crack stage.

  2. Add the vinegar to the boiling sugar and continue boiling until the syrup starts to look yellow.

  3. Quickly add the almonds to the syrup and pour the mixture onto a slab, spreading it to about 1 inch thick.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Almond + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the crunchy, nutty body that makes up most of the brittle.
Granulated sugar
Boils into a hard syrup that sets into the brittle's crisp, glassy structure.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps keep the boiled sugar from crystallising, giving a smoother brittle.

The step that matters

Watching the syrup colour and the almonds in the oven. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes the crack stage, and nuts scorch fast in a hot oven. Removing the syrup or almonds a little early avoids a bitter, burnt flavour, while letting them go too long does the same.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Soybeanfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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