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Dessert

Almond Caramel Baskets

A confection of blanched almonds coated in caramelized sugar, shaped into baskets and decorated with pistachios, biscuits, or liqueur drops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Almond Caramel Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Cut the blanched almonds into long slices.

  2. Color the almonds pink with cochineal in a small copper pan over gentle heat, stirring until dry.

Shape the basket

  1. Grease a sheet of copper or tin with butter.

  2. Arrange the pink almonds on the greased sheet in the shape of half the desired mold.

  3. Prepare sugar for spinning and spin it over the almonds until they are coated.

  4. Turn the mold and spin sugar over the other side, then apply the almonds to the mold and fix them together with more sugar.

  5. Trim off any excess parts and decorate the basket with small pieces of pistachios, biscuits, or liqueur drops.

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).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Form the basket's structure and visible shell once bound together with sugar.
Sugar
Melts and hardens into a glassy coating that spins and fixes the almonds together.
Cochineal
Provides the pink color of the almonds without changing their texture.

The step that matters

Drying the colored almonds. Stirring over gentle heat until the almonds are fully dry matters because any leftover moisture can prevent the sugar from adhering and hardening properly, and gentle heat avoids scorching the color.

“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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