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Salted Almonds

Salted almonds are toasted almonds coated with butter and sea salt.

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 ↓

Salted Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Place the almonds in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Heat until boiling, then drain immediately.

  3. While still hot, remove the skins and wipe the almonds dry.

Toast

  1. In a small baking pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the almonds to the melted butter and stir to coat.

  3. Place in a 300°F (150°C) oven and stir occasionally until lightly browned.

Finish

  1. Remove from the oven, transfer to another dish, and sprinkle with salt. Allow 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
Form the main body of the snack, and their starches and proteins brown during toasting for flavor.
Butter
Coats the almonds, carrying heat evenly and helping them brown and taste richer.

The step that matters

Stirring while the almonds toast. Nuts go from golden to bitter within minutes because browning continues after they leave the heat. Stirring occasionally keeps the heat even so they brown evenly rather than scorching in spots.

“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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