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Dessert

To Salt Almonds

A simple preparation of almonds that are boiled, skinned, toasted with butter, salted, and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Salt Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cover the almonds with boiling water for five minutes.

  2. Dip the almonds in cold water to easily remove the skins.

  3. Spread the almonds thinly on a plate.

Brown and season

  1. Add the butter and brown the almonds in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Once browned, remove from the oven, sprinkle with salt, and stir until coated.

  3. Turn the almonds out onto a cloth to cool.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the nut base whose sugars and proteins brown to give the flavor and crunch.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat evenly and enriches flavor while the almonds brown.

The step that matters

Stopping the browning. Almonds go from golden to bitter within minutes as browning reactions speed up. Remove them once golden, because residual heat on the hot pan keeps darkening them as they cool.

“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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