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Dessert

Cream Almonds

A confection of almonds coated in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond 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 ↓

Cream Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Combine 5 pounds of sugar and 1 quart of water in a large kettle.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches 240°F (115°C).

  3. Add 2 pounds of almonds, ensuring they are uniform in size.

  4. Stir and cook until the sugar granulates.

  5. Remove from heat and set aside.

  6. Stir until the sugar is loose and the almonds are separated.

  7. Place the almonds in a sieve, shake off excess sugar, and cover with a cloth to keep warm.

Coat the almonds

  1. Combine 10 pounds of sugar and 2 quarts of water in another kettle.

  2. Cook carefully until it reaches 248°F (120°C).

  3. Warm the almonds in a round-bottom kettle.

  4. Gradually add syrup while stirring the almonds back and forth.

  5. Have a helper pour the syrup in a fine stream.

  6. Stop pouring when the almonds start to stick together, but keep stirring.

  7. Continue until all the syrup is used.

Dry

  1. Pour the almonds into a tray and allow to dry overnight in a cold syrup at 35°F (2°C).

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. Sugar + almondtop 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 main body of the confection and get coated with crystallized sugar.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the almonds and crystallizes into a sweet, opaque shell.

The step that matters

Stop pouring the syrup when the almonds start to stick together. Adding syrup in a fine stream while stirring spreads it thinly over each almond. Pouring past the point where the almonds clump can leave excess syrup that dries into clusters instead of separate, evenly coated almonds.

“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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