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Dessert

Salted Almonds

Salted almonds are blanched, skinned, dried, fried in olive oil and butter, then sprinkled with fine salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salted Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and dry

  1. Blanch almonds by boiling them for 20 minutes in water with dissolved salt.

  2. Remove the skins and dry the almonds with a towel by moving them around.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the almonds in equal parts olive oil and butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove from the hot fat and place on brown paper, changing the paper occasionally.

  3. Sprinkle with fine salt before serving.

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. Almond + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 bite and nutty flavor once fried.
Olive oil
Fat that conducts heat evenly and fries the almonds to a crisp, golden surface.
Butter
Fat that adds rich flavor and helps the almonds brown.

The step that matters

Remove the almonds from the hot fat at golden brown. Nuts keep darkening from residual heat after they leave the fat, so leaving them in too long can scorch them and make them bitter. Pulling them out as they reach golden brown lets carryover heat finish the color without burning.

“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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