Skip to main content
Dessert

Grilled Almonds — Grillage d'Amandes

A sweet roasted almond confection coated with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Grilled Almonds — Grillage d'Amandes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Cut the blanched almonds lengthwise into five or six pieces.

  3. Oil a baking sheet.

Make the almond mass

  1. In a saucepan, combine the almonds and sugar, stirring constantly until the sugar begins to granulate.

  2. Continue stirring until the almonds form a mass.

Shape and finish

  1. Spread the almond mixture onto the oiled baking sheet.

  2. Flatten the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle the flattened mixture with cinnamon or nonpareil confections.

  4. Cut into pieces while still warm.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Form the main body of the brittle and give it a crunchy, nutty bite.
Sugar
Melts and coats the almonds, then hardens as it cools to bind them into a brittle sheet.

The step that matters

Stirring until the sugar begins to granulate. Sugar that crystallizes unevenly or burns turns bitter and gritty. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the sugar coats the almonds evenly before it sets into a mass.

“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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes