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Salted Almonds
Heat one tablespoon olive oil in chafing dish; add one cup blanched and dried almonds. Stir until evenly colored. Drain and sprinkle with salt.
A four-line recipe that depends almost entirely on heat control and on the nuts being genuinely dry before they meet the oil.
- Chafing dishThe chafing dish here is simply a shallow pan over a spirit lamp — a low, gentle, somewhat unreliable heat source. A heavy skillet over medium-low heat does the same job with better control.
- Blanched and driedBlanch by covering shelled almonds with boiling water for a minute, slipping off the skins, then drying them thoroughly on a towel. Damp nuts will spit in the oil and steam rather than brown.
- The hingeAlmonds carry on cooking after they leave the pan. Pull them when they are a shade lighter than you want, since residual heat in the nut takes them the rest of the way; a pan left unattended can go from gold to scorched very quickly.
- Stirring"Stir until evenly colored" means constant motion, not occasional. Expect five to eight minutes over medium-low heat, and judge by smell as much as color — the nuts announce themselves when they are ready.
- OilOne tablespoon per cup of nuts is enough to coat, not to fry. A strongly flavored extra-virgin will dominate, so use a light olive or neutral oil if you want the almond to lead.
- SaltingDrain on paper or a coarse cloth and salt while still hot and slightly oily, which is when the salt will cling best. Fine salt adheres better than flaky or coarse.
- Yield and keepingOne cup of almonds serves six to eight as a cocktail nut. Cool completely before storing airtight; they stay crisp about a week and go soft once the oil starts to work into them.
Salted almonds were a fixture of the formal American table around 1900, set out in small individual dishes at each place alongside the olives and celery — part of the standing furniture of a dinner rather than a course of its own. Their appearance in a Lowney's book, a general cookbook issued by a chocolate manufacturer and containing a substantial confectionery section, is unsurprising given how the nut and the sweet trades overlapped. The chafing dish specified here places the recipe in its moment too. Chafing-dish cookery was fashionable in the 1890s and 1900s as tabletop entertaining for people without a full kitchen staff, and cookbooks of the period routinely offered small savory items that could be made in front of guests.