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Salted Almonds
Blanch 1/4 pound almonds and dry on towel. Put 1/3 cup clear oil in very small sauce pan. When hot put in almonds and fry until delicate brown, stirring almonds constantly. Remove with spoon or skimmer, taking up as little oil as possible. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt. Cook rest same way, small quantity at a time.
A short, reliable method: shallow-fry blanched almonds in oil rather than roasting them dry. The whole thing turns on watching the colour, since almonds carry on browning after they leave the pan.
- Pull them earlyAlmonds hold enough heat to keep cooking on the paper, so it is safer to lift them at a pale gold, a shade lighter than you want, rather than holding them in the pan until they look fully browned.
- BlanchingCover the almonds with boiling water for about a minute, drain, and the skins slip off between finger and thumb. Dry them thoroughly before frying or the oil will spit.
- "Clear oil"Probably a light, clear salad oil; period usage is not precise enough to say whether olive oil was excluded. Any refined oil with a reasonably high smoke point works, hot but not smoking.
- Small pan, small batchesA very small saucepan keeps the 1/3 cup of oil deep enough to surround the nuts. Crowding drops the temperature and gives you soft, greasy almonds instead of crisp ones.
- DrainingBrown paper means unprinted grocery-bag paper. Paper towels do the same job; drain on them, then salt at once while the surface is still oily so the salt sticks.
- SaltFine salt clings best. Figure about half a teaspoon for a quarter pound, added a pinch at a time and tossed, rather than all at once.
- Yield and keepingA quarter pound gives something under a cup, enough for four to six as a nibble alongside drinks. Cooled completely and sealed in a jar, they should stay crisp for several days.
Salted almonds were a fixture of formal American dinners from the 1890s through the 1930s, set out in small dishes at each place along with olives and celery, to be picked at between courses. Frying in oil was one common period treatment, alongside oven-roasting with butter or oil: it browns the nut evenly and leaves a film of oil for the salt to adhere to. Almonds were largely imported for much of the nineteenth century in the United States, but the growth of California orchards in the later decades made them cheaper by the turn of the century.