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Dessert

Soft Nougat

A chewy confection made from egg whites, honey, sugar, almonds, and rice paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soft Nougat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nougat

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Pour the melted honey onto the egg whites while beating continuously.

  3. Slowly add ½ lb of sugar that has been boiled with ¼ cup of water until it forms a soft ball.

  4. Continue beating over heat until the mixture breaks apart when dropped in cold water.

  5. Add the remaining ½ lb of sugar boiled with ¼ cup of water until it snaps in cold water.

  6. Stir in the almonds and pour the mixture into flat pans lined with rice paper.

Set and cut

  1. Cover the top with rice paper and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, cut into squares.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  2. Almond + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Honey + ricetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together542 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the nougat its light, airy structure.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and keeps the nougat soft and chewy rather than crystallised.
Sugar
Boiled to set stages, it forms the firm, chewy body of the nougat as it cools.
Blanched almonds
Add texture and body, giving the nougat a bite against its soft base.

The step that matters

Adding the hot sugar syrup. The syrup must be added slowly while beating so it blends into the whites without deflating them or setting in lumps. Cooking the sugar to the right stage controls whether the nougat turns out soft or hard once cooled.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, honey, sugar, rice. 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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