Skip to main content
Dessert

Salted Almonds

A simple snack of almonds roasted with butter or oil and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the almonds

  1. Shell the almonds and place them in a bowl.

  2. Cover with boiling water and let stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour off the water, replace with cold water, and rub off the brown skins.

  4. Shake in a colander until dry.

Season and roast

  1. In a shallow dish, combine the almonds with melted butter or oil.

  2. Let stand for 1 hour.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, using 1 tablespoon per cup of nuts.

  4. Place in a greased paper bag and roast for 10 minutes, shaking occasionally.

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
Provide the crunchy, nutty base that the coating and salt are applied to.
Butter or olive oil
Carries the salt onto the nut surfaces and adds richness and mild browning.
Coarse sea salt
Adds a sharp savory flavor that contrasts with the nuts' sweetness.

The step that matters

Rubbing off the brown skins. Skins that are left on can taste bitter and dull the nuts' flavor, so the blanched almonds must be rubbed clean and fully dried before coating, since leftover moisture stops the fat and salt from adhering evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes