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Dessert

Nougat Basket

A hard nougat confection shaped into a basket, made with sugar, almonds, cream of tartar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Nougat Basket

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the sugar in a clean copper boiling pan and add about ½ cup of water. Let it dissolve.

  2. Blanch, peel, and chop the almonds, but not too finely. Dry them near the oven.

  3. Grease a clean marble slab and the copper mold for the basket.

Make the nougat

  1. Place the sugar on the fire, boil, and skim. Then add the cream of tartar.

  2. Once the sugar turns pale amber, add the almonds and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture onto the slab, let it cool slightly, then roll it out quickly with a greased rolling pin.

Shape and serve

  1. Cut out desired shapes and press them into the mold.

  2. Unmold as soon as set and use the basket for serving ices, bon‑bons, or petits fours.

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

Cane sugar
Forms the brittle, set structure of the nougat as it caramelises to pale amber.
Almonds
Add crunch and body, giving the nougat its texture and nutty flavour.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents crystallisation.

The step that matters

Stopping the sugar at pale amber. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelise. Pale amber gives a balanced flavour and a set that is firm but not bitter, so the timing must be watched closely.

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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