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Burnt Almonds

Burnt almonds are sweet almonds caramelized with sugar and cochineal for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar coating

  1. Melt the sugar in the water in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the almonds and stir until they are well coated with sugar.

  3. Boil until you hear the almonds crack, then remove from heat.

  4. Stir the almonds until they are dry.

Colour the coating

  1. Sift off the loose sugar using a wire sieve.

  2. Moisten the sifted sugar with enough water to make it wet.

  3. Bring the moist sugar to a boil.

  4. Add the cochineal powder to color the sugar red.

  5. Return the almonds to the pan.

  6. Stir over the heat until the almonds are completely dry.

  7. Store the finished almonds in glass jars.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + sugartop 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

Sweet almonds
Form the crunchy centre that the sugar coating encases.
Loaf sugar
Melts and recrystallises into the crisp, sweet coating around each almond.
Cochineal powder
Colours the sugar coating red.

The step that matters

Boil until the almonds crack. Sugar must reach the right stage so it crystallises into a dry, opaque coating; undercooked sugar stays sticky, while overcooked sugar darkens and turns bitter.

“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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