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Dessert

Burnt Almonds — Red

A sweet treat of almonds roasted in a red-colored 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 ↓

Burnt Almonds — Red

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar with prepared cochineal to color the syrup.

  2. Add almonds to the boiling syrup.

Burn and cool

  1. Stir continuously until the almonds are burnt to your desired level.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool before serving.

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 crunchy body of the candy and take on browning as the syrup cooks.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the almonds and caramelizes as it burns, giving sweetness and flavor.
Prepared cochineal
Colors the syrup red, giving the almonds their characteristic hue.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while the almonds burn. Sugar syrup can go from amber to bitter-burnt within moments. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the almonds brown uniformly rather than scorching in spots.

“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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