Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Nougat
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Blanch the almonds and shred them finely.
Bake the almonds in the oven until crisp.
Make the nougat
In a lined saucepan, combine the caster sugar and lemon juice, stirring until it boils and turns clear and amber.
Add the hot almonds to the sugar mixture and let it boil for another minute.
Shape and serve
Pour the nougat onto oiled paper on a tin dish.
If desired, mold the nougat into shapes using half a lemon.
Once cold, fill the molds with whipped cream if serving.
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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Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,655 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Provide the crisp, crunchy texture that stays firm within the chewy set nougat.
- Castor sugar
- Melts and cooks to an amber syrup that sets firm as it cools, forming the nougat's body.
- Lemon juice
- Its acidity helps keep the cooked sugar from crystallising, so the nougat stays smooth.
The step that matters
Cooking the sugar to clear and amber. Sugar can go from amber to burnt within seconds. Cook it only until it turns amber, because overcooked sugar becomes bitter and sets too hard, while undercooked sugar stays soft and will not set properly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar. 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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