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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Shell and blanch the almonds.
Once dry, spread them in a baking pan and stir with melted butter.
Bake and season
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned, stirring often to prevent scorching.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle generously with coarse sea salt, tossing to coat.
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 main body of the snack and, once toasted, supply the crunch and nutty flavor.
- Melted butter
- Carries fat that helps the almonds brown evenly and gives them a rich coating.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the surface, adding a salty contrast to the toasted, nutty almonds.
The step that matters
Stirring while baking. Almonds contain sugars and proteins that darken quickly at high oven heat. Stirring often moves them around so they brown evenly and do not scorch on the bottom of the pan.
“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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