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Dessert

Burnt Almond Chocolates

A confection of roasted almonds mixed with chocolate cream, formed into balls and dipped in chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Burnt Almond Chocolates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Roast and almost burn the almonds.

  2. Grind the almonds very fine.

Make the centers

  1. Knead the ground almonds into the bon bon cream.

  2. Add sugar to stiffen the cream.

  3. Roll the mixture into balls the size of marbles.

Finish

  1. Dip the balls in chocolate.

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 + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Roasting browns them for a nutty aroma, and grinding them fine gives the centers a smooth, dense body.
Bon bon cream
Forms the soft base that holds the ground almonds together into a pliable mixture.
Sugar
Stiffens the cream so the mixture holds its shape when rolled into balls.
Chocolate
Forms a sweet, set outer coating that encloses the almond centers.

The step that matters

Roast and almost burn the almonds. Roasting drives the Maillard browning and nutty flavor that define the truffle. Pushing them to near-burnt intensifies bitterness, so they must be watched closely and removed at the right color.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, chocolate. 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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