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Dessert

Glace Nuts

Candied nuts, optionally with Malaga grapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and grape work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 224 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Glace Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coating

  1. Melt the sugar in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Prepare a pan with boiling water and place the saucepan of melted sugar in it to keep the sugar from hardening.

Coat and finish

  1. Dip the nuts into the melted sugar to coat them.

  2. For Malaga grapes, leave the little stem on to dip them and keep the grape firm.

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. Nuts + grapetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Sugar + grapetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 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

Sugar
Melts and hardens into a glossy, crisp coating that holds onto the nuts.
Nuts
Provide the crunchy core that the sugar coating surrounds.

The step that matters

Keep the sugar melted over low heat. Sugar burns quickly once it turns dark, and stirring constantly spreads heat evenly. Sitting in boiling water keeps it fluid so it coats smoothly rather than hardening too soon.

Swap the grape

The recipe marks grape as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nuts. 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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