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Snack

Indian Devilled Almonds

A spicy, savory snack of fried almonds mixed with Worcestershire sauce, chutney, pickled walnuts, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Indian Devilled Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the blanched and lengthwise cut almonds and fry until pale brown.

Make the topping

  1. Chop the walnuts or gherkins finely and mix with Worcestershire sauce and chutney.

  2. Add the mixture to the pan and heat through.

Serve

  1. Fry the croutons until pale brown and drain them.

  2. Place the croutons on a serving dish and pile the almond mixture on top.

  3. Serve very hot.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Frying them in butter gives a crisp, golden-brown texture that contrasts with the soft topping.
Butter
Carries the heat and browns the almonds, adding richness and a nutty aroma.
Pickled walnuts or gherkins
Add sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the butter and nuts.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the savoury, sharp flavours.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth and a tangy umami note to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the almonds until pale brown. Frying in butter only until pale brown lets the nuts toast and crisp; they keep browning after leaving the pan, so overcooking makes them bitter.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, walnut, pepper. 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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