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Almonds

Grilled almonds coated in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar 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 ↓

Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 cup of blanched and dry almonds.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup of sugar and ¼ cup of water; boil until it threads.

Cook and coat

  1. Add the almonds to the syrup and cook, stirring occasionally.

  2. When the almonds change color slightly, remove from heat and stir until the syrup turns to sugar, coating the almonds.

  3. Serve with salted almonds.

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 + 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 crunchy nut base that the sugar coating clings to.
Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and recrystallizes into a crisp, sweet coating on the almonds.

The step that matters

Removing the almonds from heat as the syrup turns to sugar. Sugar syrup keeps cooking and browning quickly once it starts to crystallize. Pulling the pan off heat at the right moment, and stirring until the syrup turns opaque and sugary, keeps the coating light rather than scorched or 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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