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Dessert

Chocolate Nougatines

A chocolate nougat made with ground almonds, castor sugar, Mexican chocolate, and chocolate butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Nougatines

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nougatine

  1. Place the sugar in a pan.

  2. Melt the sugar until it turns a nice brown color.

  3. Stir in the ground almonds. Mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture onto an oiled slab.

  5. Fold the edges into the center until a compact square about ½ inch thick is formed.

  6. Cut into pieces when nearly cold.

Make the chocolate coating

  1. Cut the Mexican chocolate into small pieces.

  2. Melt the chocolate over a slow fire until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add melted chocolate butter, stirring until well combined.

  5. Stand the mixture in a basin of hot water.

  6. Stir frequently while coating the nougatines.

Coat and finish

  1. Coat with chocolate once completely cooled.

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 + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Castor sugar
Melts to a brown caramel that forms the crisp, sweet base of the nougatine.
Ground almonds
Adds nutty flavor and body to the caramel mixture.
Mexican chocolate
Forms the chocolate coating that gives the nougatines their outer layer and flavor.
Chocolate butter
Adds fat that makes the melted chocolate smooth and glossy for coating.

The step that matters

Melt the sugar until it turns a nice brown color. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes the melting point, so it can go from amber to burnt in seconds. Burnt sugar tastes bitter and sets too hard, so watch the color closely and remove it from heat at the right shade.

“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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