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Dessert

Nougat Cle Montelimart

A nougat made with sweet almonds, pistachios, honey, cane sugar, and whipped egg whites, baked and cut into blocks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nougat Cle Montelimart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Blanch, peel, and dry the sweet almonds and pistachios in the oven without allowing them to discolor.

  2. Blanch and bake the additional almonds until red brown.

Make the nougat

  1. In a pan, combine the honey and sugar, and boil until it reaches the crack stage.

  2. Pour the mixture onto the stiffly whipped egg whites while whisking well.

  3. Simmer gently until the syrup does not adhere to your fingers when dipped in water.

  4. When it can form a ball, remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the almonds and pistachios.

  6. Spread a sheet of wafer paper on a board and layer the mixture evenly, about 2 inches thick.

  7. Cover with another sheet of wafer paper, place a board or clean tin on top, and weight it evenly.

  8. Let it stand overnight.

Cut and pack

  1. Cut into blocks.

  2. Pack in grease-proof paper in a tin box.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Almond + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pistachio + honeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty body and crunch of the nougat.
Honey
Keeps the nougat soft and chewy and adds sweetness and aroma.
Sugar
Forms the boiled syrup that sets into the firm, chewy base.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the nougat its light, airy structure.
Pistachios
Add flavour, colour and extra crunch throughout the nougat.

The step that matters

Boiling the honey and sugar to the crack stage. The syrup must reach the right temperature: too little leaves the nougat soft and sticky, while overheating makes it hard and brittle once it cools.

Swap the pistachio

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, honey, sugar, egg):

  1. Pistachiothe original
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, honey, sugar, egg. 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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