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Burnt Almonds

A sweet treat of almonds coated in sugar and flavored with orange-flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 lbs. of sugar until it reaches the ball stage.

  2. Add 1 lb. of blanched and dried almonds to the pan with the sugar.

  3. Stir the mixture off the heat, allowing the almonds to absorb as much sugar as possible.

  4. Repeat the process until the almonds are well saturated with sugar.

  5. Flavor the mixture with orange-flower water.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the crunchy, nutty core that the sugar coating surrounds.
Sugar
Forms the sweet, crystalline coating on each almond as it cools and sets.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma to the sugar coating.

The step that matters

Stirring the almonds off the heat. Sugar syrup cooked to the ball stage crystallizes as it cools and is stirred. Stirring off the heat lets the syrup grain up onto the almonds, building a coating. Repeating the process builds up layers until the almonds are saturated.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar. 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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