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
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 by boiling them in water, then skim and lay them on a platter to dry for several hours.
Glaze and roast
Melt the butter in a skillet and stir the almonds in it to glaze them.
Remove the almonds and roast them in a 400°F (200°C) oven, stirring often until they begin to color slightly.
Salt and serve
Take them from the oven, spread on clean paper, and sprinkle with fine table salt, repeating until well coated.
Serve cold, ensuring the almonds do not get too 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
- Provide the main crunchy body and nutty flavor of the snack.
- Butter
- Coats the almonds in fat so the salt adheres and the surface toasts evenly.
- Fine table salt
- Seasons the surface and gives the glazed almonds their savory contrast to sweetness.
The step that matters
Roasting to slight color. Almonds keep browning after they leave the oven because residual heat continues cooking them. Stopping at a slight color prevents bitter, burnt flavor, so remove them as soon as they begin to color.
“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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