Skip to main content

Salted Nuts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nuts and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Salted Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Heat oil or butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the nuts until golden brown, about 8-9 minutes.

  3. Drain the nuts on kitchen paper for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Toss the nuts in cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt until well coated.

  5. Place the coated nuts in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes to dry and crisp.

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. Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Nuts + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together187 recipes

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

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes