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Devilled Almonds

A savory almond mixture served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Devilled Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the topping

  1. Shred the almonds and gherkins.

  2. In a skillet, sauté the almonds in butter until golden brown.

  3. Add the gherkins, chutney, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir over heat until very hot.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on the crostini.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Almond + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Sweet almonds
Provide crunch and a nutty flavour, and the butter helps them brown.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the almonds turn golden brown in the pan.
Gherkins
Add sharp acidity and a crisp texture to balance the rich almonds.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that round out the savoury topping.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth that gives the topping a salty, umami character.
Crostini
Provide a crisp base that holds the hot topping.

The step that matters

Sauté the almonds until golden brown. Browning develops nutty, toasted flavour through the Maillard reaction, but the almonds can scorch quickly in hot butter. Scorched nuts taste bitter, so watch them closely and stop as soon as they reach golden brown.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sauce, pepper. 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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