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Almonds, Salted
Take two ounces of sweet almonds, throw them into boiling water, and let them remain on the fire till the skin can be slipped off easily. Skin them, and dry them in the oven. Make a table-spoonful of oil or butter hot in the frying-pan, and fry the almonds in it till lightly browned. Drain, and dust with fine salt, and toss the almonds until each one is savoured. If preferred, they can be served hot as soon as salted, or they may be set aside until quite cold. Probable cost, 4d.
A straightforward blanch-and-fry method that predates the modern habit of oven-roasting nuts. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes, and the only real risk is walking away from the pan.
- QuantityTwo ounces is about 55 g, roughly a third of a cup of whole almonds — one or two servings alongside drinks. Scale up freely, but fry in batches so the nuts sit in a single layer.
- "Sweet almonds"This is simply the ordinary edible almond, distinguished in Victorian shops from bitter almonds, which were sold for flavouring and contain amygdalin. Any supermarket whole almond is a sweet almond; buy them raw and unblanched rather than pre-roasted.
- BlanchingA minute or so in boiling water is usually enough for the skins to slip under thumb and finger; the recipe simply says to wait until they do. Prolonged soaking softens the nut, and it may fry limp rather than crisp.
- Drying in the ovenThe point is to drive off surface water so the fat does not spit, not to toast the nuts. A low oven, 250–275F, for ten minutes, or a hot dry pan, will do it. They should feel dry, not coloured.
- The fryingA tablespoon of oil or clarified butter over medium heat, moving the nuts constantly. Almonds go from pale gold to burnt in under a minute, and they carry on cooking in their own heat after they leave the pan — pull them a shade lighter than you want.
- Salting while hotFine salt only, and applied the instant they are drained: the film of hot fat is what makes it stick. Coarse crystals slide off once the nuts cool.
- KeepingCooled completely, they keep about a week in a sealed jar. Any warmth trapped in the jar turns them soft.
- "Probable cost, 4d."Cassell's gives a 'probable cost' for most entries as a guide to household budgeting. Fourpence was not a trivial outlay in the late nineteenth century, and salted almonds sat towards the luxury end of the table.
Salted almonds belong to the Victorian and Edwardian dinner table rather than the kitchen proper: they were set out in small dishes for guests to pick at between courses, along with olives and radishes, and later became a fixture of the cocktail hour. Almonds themselves reached British cookery from the Mediterranean by way of medieval trade and were long treated as an expensive store-cupboard item, used ground for thickening, milked for fast-day cooking, and pounded into marchpane. The instruction to dry the blanched nuts before they meet the fat is the detail that separates a crisp almond from a leathery one, and it applies well beyond this dish.