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 ↓
Salted or Roasted Almonds
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Blanch the almonds.
Mix the almonds with melted butter and salt.
Spread the mixture on a baking pan.
Roast
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, stirring often.
Remove from oven when they are bright yellow-brown.
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.
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Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- The main ingredient, providing the crunchy body and nutty flavor as they roast.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat that helps the almonds brown evenly and lets the salt cling to them.
The step that matters
Bake and stir often. Nuts darken quickly at high heat because their sugars and proteins brown rapidly. Stirring spreads the heat evenly, and removing them at bright yellow-brown lets residual heat finish the cooking without scorching.
“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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