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Dessert

Burnt Almonds

A caramelized almond confection made by boiling sugar with water, adding almonds, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Burnt Almonds

Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Burnt Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir occasionally until dissolved.

  2. Once boiling, stop stirring and boil for 2-3 minutes.

Coat and cool

  1. Add the almonds and stir briskly until the sugar slightly browns and coats the almonds.

  2. Transfer to a sieve, separate any almonds that are stuck together, and let cool completely.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + 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

Demerara sugar
Melts into a syrup that browns and hardens into a sweet, crisp coating on the nuts.
Almonds
Form the crunchy core that the caramelized sugar coats.

The step that matters

Stir briskly after adding the almonds. Once sugar syrup turns amber it darkens quickly and can burn. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sugar from scorching in patches while it coats the nuts.

“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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