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Dessert

Burnt Almond Paste

A sweet paste made by blending burnt almonds, sugar, vanilla syrup, and filberts, then cooked and molded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Burnt Almond Paste

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.

Make the nougat

  1. Grind the almonds with the vanilla syrup and sugar.

  2. Make a nougat with 1 lb filberts, 1 lb almonds, and 3 lbs sugar.

  3. When cold, pound the nougat into grains.

  4. Mix the grains with the almond paste.

Make the syrup and mold

  1. Boil 8 lbs of sugar with a little glucose at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Dry the centers in the open air.

  3. For molding, stir 1 lb of almonds into slightly heated syrup.

  4. Boil 8 lbs of sugar with a little glucose at 230°F (110°C).

  5. Mix in the almond paste.

  6. Pour quickly into starch molds.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Almond + filberttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dry blanched almonds
Form the bulk of the paste, providing the main nutty flavour and body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the paste and, when boiled, forms the syrup that sets the centers.
Filberts
Add a second nut flavour to the nougat and paste.
Glucose
Helps keep the boiled sugar smooth and prevents it from crystallising.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to 300°F (150°C) for the centers. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set correctly. Too low and the centers stay soft; too high and they turn brittle or burnt.

Swap the filbert

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, vanilla, syrup. 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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