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Dessert

Salted Almonds

Salted almonds are roasted almonds coated with butter and coarse 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 walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salted 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. Blanch the almonds by pouring boiling water over them until the skins slip off easily.

Roast

  1. Place the almonds in a pan and roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown, stirring frequently.

Butter and salt

  1. Add the butter to the roasted almonds and mix well.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the buttered almonds and mix until evenly coated.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 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. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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; roasting browns them and develops their nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the salt and gives the almonds a richer, smoother coating.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the almonds on the surface, providing the savoury flavour that contrasts with their sweetness.

The step that matters

Roasting the almonds. Roasting in a hot oven until light brown develops flavour through browning, but over-roasting turns the almonds bitter and burnt. Stirring frequently ensures even colour across the batch.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, butter):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter. 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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