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Burnt Almonds

Burnt almonds are toasted almonds coated with sugar that hardens into a crisp shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Sugar and almond 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

Coat the almonds

  1. Warm the shelled almonds slightly.

  2. Boil the sugar with water until it reaches the ball degree.

  3. Stir in the almonds with a wooden spoon, ensuring they don't stick.

  4. When a crackling sound is heard, remove the pan from heat and stir until the sugar resembles coarse sand.

Repeat and finish

  1. Pour the contents onto a wire sieve and cover with paper for 5 minutes.

  2. Pick out the almonds and return the sugar to the saucepan with just enough water to dissolve it.

  3. Repeat the coating process, keeping the almonds separated.

  4. For a thicker coating, repeat 3 or 4 times.

  5. To make them crinkly, boil 2½ pounds of sugar to the crack stage and pour over the almonds in two coats, stirring each time.

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. 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

Almonds
The nut core that the crystallized sugar coating forms around and holds onto.
Sugar
Forms the crisp, crystallized coating that turns sandy and then hardens around the almonds.

The step that matters

Stirring off the heat at the crackling stage. Once the pan leaves the heat, the sugar cools and crystallizes as you stir, turning it coarse and sandy. Stirring too little leaves a smooth glaze, while stirring too long can leave the almonds stuck together or the coating unevenly crumbly.

“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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