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To Colour Almond Comfits

A method for coating almonds with gum, starch, sugar, and food coloring to produce colored comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Colour Almond Comfits

Ingredients

Directions

Coat the almonds

  1. Heat the almonds in a pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of gum and stir until it dries on the almonds.

  3. Add another tablespoon of gum and dredge with starch powder for a second coating.

  4. Use a beading funnel to coat the almonds with boiled sugar and gum.

  5. Separate the almonds and let them dry on a cane sieve.

  6. Clean the pan.

Build the coating

  1. Repeat the coating process five more times, drying at a very slow heat until the next day.

  2. For the final two coatings, add food coloring to the syrup.

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

Almonds
Form the core that each layer of sugar and gum builds around.
Gum
Binds the layers together so each coat dries and hardens onto the almonds.
Boiled sugar
Forms the hard, crisp outer shell that gives the candied almonds their sweetness and crunch.
Starch powder
Dusts the sticky coating so layers do not clump and separate cleanly.

The step that matters

Drying at a very slow heat between coats. Each layer must dry fully before the next is added. Heat that is too high can crack or melt the shell, while coats added too soon can trap moisture and stick the almonds together.

“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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