Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Caramel Powder
Ingredients
Directions
Make the caramel
Melt the sugar in a steel pan over medium heat.
Blanch the almonds and add them to the melted sugar.
Continue cooking until the mixture turns a brown to cream color.
Set and grind
Pour the mixture onto a greased marble surface or platter.
Once cooled, pound the mixture into a fine powder.
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.
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Melts and caramelizes to add sweetness and color, then hardens when cooled so it can be ground.
- Almonds
- Add nutty flavor and a crunchy texture to the brittle caramel.
The step that matters
Continue cooking until brown to cream color. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize. Taking it too far turns the flavor bitter and the mixture dark and harsh. Stop when the color matches the target, since the mixture keeps darkening slightly as it cools.
“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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