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Dessert

Sugared Almonds

A sweet treat made by boiling almonds in a sugar syrup, then drying them.

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

Sugared Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 1 pint of water with 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Stir in blanched Jordan almonds and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the almonds and let them dry.

Coat and dry

  1. Reduce the syrup by half.

  2. Dip the almonds in the thickened syrup for 1 minute.

  3. Dry the almonds on an inverted sieve in a warm place.

  4. Store the almonds in a tin box.

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. 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that dries into a sweet, crisp, glossy coating on the almonds.
Almonds
Provide the crunchy centre that the hardened sugar coating surrounds.

The step that matters

Reduce the syrup by half. The syrup must be concentrated enough that it thickens and crystallises into a crisp shell as it dries. If it is too thin, the coating stays sticky; if overcooked, it turns grainy or hard to dip evenly.

“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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