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Dessert

Salt Almonds

Roasted almonds flavored with butter, lard, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Salt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and dry them on a towel.

Fry

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the almonds and fry until delicately browned, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove the almonds with a spoon or small skimmer, taking up as little fat as possible.

Finish

  1. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with coarse sea 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 + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 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
Provide the crunchy, nutty base that becomes the snack once fried and salted.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the almonds brown evenly in the fat.
Lard
Conducts heat steadily and gives a crisp, fried surface without burning as quickly as butter alone.

The step that matters

Removing the almonds from the fat. Stirring constantly and frying only until delicately browned matters because almonds keep darkening from residual heat after leaving the pan. Taking up as little fat as possible keeps the finished almonds crisp and less greasy.

“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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