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Dessert

Almond Candy. Petit Candi d’Amandes.

A confection of sweet almonds coated in clarified sugar and colored with carmine, saffron, and spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Candy. Petit Candi d’Amandes.

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.

Grain the sugar

  1. Skin the almonds and cut them into narrow long chips.

  2. In a pan, combine the clarified sugar and almonds.

  3. Cook over heat with a wooden spatula until the sugar begins to grain.

  4. Remove from heat and continue to work until it grains.

  5. Sift out the sugar and divide the almonds into four parts for coloring.

Color the almonds

  1. Color one part white, one red with carmine, one yellow with saffron, and one green with spinach. Dry the colored almonds in a warm place.

Fill and bake

  1. Prepare more sugar to fill your mold and sprinkle the top with the almonds.

  2. Gently press the almonds into the sugar with a fork.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for five hours.

  4. Drain well and allow to cool for two hours before removing from the mold.

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 + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Saffron + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Form the main body of the candy, giving it crunch and a nutty flavor.
Clarified sugar
Forms the grained sugar mass that holds the almonds together and sets as the candy cools.

The step that matters

Graining the sugar. Graining happens when stirred sugar recrystallizes into a sandy, opaque mass. Removing it from heat and working it while it cools lets the grains form evenly around the almonds.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar, saffron):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, saffron. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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