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Dessert

Almond Candy

A sweet almond confection made by boiling sugar, honey, and cream of tartar, then adding butter and coating almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy base

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and honey and bring to a boil.

  2. Dissolve cream of tartar in a little cold water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Cook until it snaps when tested in cold water.

  4. Add the walnut-sized butter and cook for a few more minutes.

Set the candy

  1. Pour the mixture over shelled almonds spread on a buttered baking sheet.

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Honey + almondtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy's sweet base and sets firm and brittle as the syrup cooks down.
Honey
Interferes with sugar crystals so the candy stays smooth rather than grainy.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallizing.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer, more tender bite to the candy.
Shelled almonds
Provide the crunch and nutty flavor that the set candy is built around.

The step that matters

Cooking until it snaps in cold water. The syrup must reach a high enough temperature to set hard when cooled. Stopping early leaves the candy sticky, while overcooking scorches the sugar and makes it bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, honey, cream, butter, almond. 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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