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Grilled Almonds

A sweet snack of almonds caramelized in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Grilled Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds by pouring hot water over them and letting them sit for a few minutes.

  2. Plunge the almonds into cold water and dry thoroughly.

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water until it reaches a hair stage.

  2. Add the blanched almonds to the syrup and cook, stirring occasionally, until they turn a delicate brown.

  3. As soon as the sugar begins to color, remove the pan from the heat and stir the almonds rapidly until the syrup crystallizes and clings to the nuts.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + olivetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

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

Sugar and olive barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the crunchy nut base that the sugar syrup coats and crystallizes around.
Granulated sugar
Dissolves into syrup that caramelizes and then crystallizes onto the nuts, giving sweetness and colour.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup before caramelizing.

The step that matters

Removing the pan from the heat as the sugar begins to color. Sugar keeps darkening from residual heat after it leaves the flame, so removing the pan early helps prevent a bitter, burnt flavor while the nuts are still pale and delicate.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, olive):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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