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Dessert

Almond Taffy

A sweet confection made by boiling sugar with butter and almonds until it crackles in cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond 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 ↓

Almond Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and let it boil for 20 minutes.

Add the almonds and finish

  1. Stir in the blanched almonds that have been divided and dried.

  2. Continue boiling until the mixture crackles in cold water.

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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the candy a smooth, tender bite.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled down, sets into the hard, brittle body of the taffy.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor that contrast with the chewy or brittle candy.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the mixture crackles in cold water. Sugar syrup hardens as its water boils off, so the cook must boil until the candy reaches the hard-crack stage. Stopping early leaves a sticky, chewy result, while boiling too long makes the sugar darken, taste bitter, and burn.

“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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