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Devilled Almonds

A dish of fried almonds mixed with chutney, sauce, pepper, salt, and cayenne, served hot on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Devilled Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds and cut each into four pieces.

Fry and season

  1. Fry the almonds in olive oil until golden.

  2. Mix the fried almonds with chutney, sauce, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot on small rounds of fried bread.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  3. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + olivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Almond + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 base that the seasonings cling to.
Olive oil
Fries the almonds, carrying heat evenly to brown them golden and crisp.
Harvey sauce or worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth and salty umami to the coating.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the savoury and spicy notes.

The step that matters

Frying the almonds until golden. Frying is quick, and almonds go from golden to bitter-burnt within moments. Removing them at the first golden colour keeps them crisp and sweet, and they continue to crisp as they cool.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper, olive):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, olive. 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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