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Dessert

Salt Nuts

A mixture of almonds, walnuts, and pecans toasted with oil or butter and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut 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 ↓

Salt Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the nuts

  1. Shell, blanch, and dry the almonds by soaking in boiling water until the husks slip off easily.

  2. Crack the walnuts and pecans carefully to get unbroken halves.

Roast and salt

  1. Heat the oil or butter in a bright tin, then stir in the nuts to coat them well.

  2. Place the pan in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the nuts are browned, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  3. Remove from the oven when colored enough and sift fine salt over them liberally.

  4. Once cooled, shake the nuts to remove excess salt.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Almond + pecanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the main body of the snack and brown to a crisp, nutty flavor when roasted.
Walnuts
Add rich, oily body and a slightly bitter nutty flavor that browns in the oven.
Pecans
Add buttery richness and a tender crunch that browns evenly in the oil.
Salad oil or fresh butter
Coats the nuts so they brown evenly and salt adheres to the surface.

The step that matters

Stirring during oven roasting. Nuts contain sugars and oils that brown quickly near the end of roasting, and then scorch within minutes. Frequent stirring spreads heat evenly and lets you pull them at the right color, since they keep darkening after they leave the oven.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, walnut, butter. 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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