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Almonds Fried in Olive Oil

Almonds are fried in olive oil until golden and then seasoned with 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 olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almonds Fried in Olive Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the almonds

  1. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the shelled almonds and stir constantly for 5 to 7 minutes. Be careful not to burn the almonds, as it will ruin their flavor.

Drain and season

  1. Once done, drain the almonds from the oil and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Save the drained oil for use in soups or stews.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main substance, and frying turns their starches and oils into a crisp, nutty-flavored crunch.
Olive oil
Conducts heat evenly to the nuts, so they crisp and brown and pick up richness.

The step that matters

Stir constantly and stop before the almonds burn. Nuts keep darkening from residual heat after they leave the pan, and browning goes past nutty to bitter quickly. Constant stirring keeps heat even so the almonds colour uniformly instead of 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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