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Dessert

Almond Rock

A candy made by boiling sugar to crack stage and mixing with almonds, then shaping into a roll and slicing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Almond Rock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rock

  1. Boil the dark sugar until it reaches the crack stage.

  2. Pour the hot sugar onto a slab.

  3. Immediately spread the almonds over the sugar and work them in thoroughly.

  4. Once firm, shape the mixture into a thick roll.

  5. Place the roll on a hard wood board and cut it into half-inch thick slices with a large sharp knife.

Prepare

  1. Ensure all grit is removed from the almonds before use.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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

Dark sugar
Forms the hard, brittle candy base when boiled to the crack stage.
Sweet barbary almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour, held in the set sugar.

The step that matters

Working the almonds in while the sugar is still hot. Sugar sets quickly as it cools, so the almonds must be spread and worked in immediately. If the sugar firms first, the nuts will not mix evenly and the candy will be uneven.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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