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Dessert

Toffee with Almonds

A caramelized sugar and butter confection studded with blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond 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 ↓

Toffee with Almonds

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and thoroughly dry the almonds in a slow oven or before the fire.

Make the toffee

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture until it crackles when dropped into cold water.

  3. Add the almonds and continue boiling until the toffee snaps between the teeth without sticking.

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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, brittle body of the toffee as it cooks to a hard set.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich flavor and a smooth, tender bite in the toffee.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavor and crunch, and must be dry so they do not make the toffee wet.

The step that matters

Boiling until the toffee snaps. Sugar sets hard only at a high enough cooking temperature. Stopping early leaves a sticky, chewy toffee, while cooking too long scorches the sugar and gives a bitter taste. The cold-water crackle test helps show when the sugar has reached the right stage.

“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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