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
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Shell and blanch the almonds.
Place the almonds in a baking pan and add 1 teaspoon of butter for each pound of almonds.
Bake and season
Bake at 300 °F (150 °C) until light brown and thoroughly dried, stirring frequently.
Once done, dust the almonds thickly with coarse sea salt.
Cool and store
Transfer to a cold dish and store in a cool, dry place until ready to use.
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.
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Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 crunchy, toasted body of the snack once dried and browned in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat that helps the almonds brown evenly and carries flavour across the nuts.
The step that matters
Baking until thoroughly dried. Stirring frequently and baking until light brown helps the almonds dry and toast evenly. Under-baked nuts stay soft and lose crispness, while over-baked nuts can taste bitter.
“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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