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How to Salt Almonds

A simple method for making salted almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

How to Salt Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Shell and blanch the almonds.

  2. Spread them on a bright tin pie plate.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of butter.

Bake and season

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden-brown.

  2. Remove from the oven and stir well.

  3. Dredge thickly with coarse sea salt.

  4. Turn out to cool.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main nut body, which toasts to a crisp, golden, nutty flavour in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the almonds brown evenly and taste rich.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the surface, giving a sharp salty contrast to the sweet, toasted nuts.

The step that matters

Bake until golden-brown. Almonds go from golden to bitter-burnt quickly, because the sugars and oils keep browning after they look done. Stir well and watch closely, so they colour evenly without scorching.

“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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