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Snack

Salt Almonds

A simple snack of blanched almonds glazed with butter and salted, then roasted until lightly browned.

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

Salt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the almonds in water to blanch them.

  2. Skim the almonds and lay them on a platter to dry for several hours.

Glaze and roast

  1. Melt butter in a skillet and stir the almonds in it to glaze them.

  2. Remove the almonds and roast them in a 350°F (175°C) oven, stirring often until they begin to color slightly.

  3. Take the roasted almonds from the oven and spread them on clean paper.

Salt and serve

  1. Sprinkle the almonds with fine table salt, repeating until well coated.

  2. Serve cold, ensuring the almonds are not too brown.

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
Form the crunchy body of the snack and carry the glaze and salt.
Fresh butter
Coats the almonds so the salt adheres and they brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Roasting until only slightly colored. Almonds keep darkening after they leave the oven because residual heat continues cooking them. Stirring often and pulling them while only lightly colored prevents bitterness from over-browning.

“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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