Why it works: Nuts and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,228 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Spanish Nuts Pralines
Ingredients
Directions
Make the praline
Put the nuts in a pan with a little water and the sugar.
Boil until the mixture begins to sparkle.
Remove from heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar feels gritty.
Return to a slow fire to dissolve the sugar again, stirring to coat the nuts.
When the nuts turn reddish and are well coated, remove from heat.
Dry
Pour onto a sieve, cover with a clean cloth, and set in a warm place to dry the sugar.
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.
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Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,228 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
- Spanish nuts
- Form the body of the praline, carrying the coating of sugar.
- Loaf sugar
- Forms a crisp, sugary coating that hardens as the mixture cools and dries.
The step that matters
Stirring the gritty sugar before re-melting. Stirring off the heat makes the sugar recrystallise into a grainy coating on the nuts. Returning to a slow fire then dissolves it again, so the nuts stay evenly coated rather than clumping or burning.
“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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