Home › Cakes › Salted Almonds (Pour boiling water)
Salted Almonds (Pour boiling water)
Pour boiling water on the almonds; cool and remove the skins; dry thoroughly and brown in a hot oven using a half tablespoon of butter or olive oil (preferably the oil) to each cup of nuts. When brown, sprinkle well with salt and spread on paper to dry and cool. A still easier way to prepare the nuts is to cook them over the fire, using a larger quantity of olive oil. As the oil can be saved and used again, this method is not necessarily extravagant.
A blanch-and-roast method that predates shelled, skinned almonds being sold by the bag. The instructions are sound; only the oven and the salt need pinning down.
- BlanchingPour boiling water over the almonds and let them stand briefly, then drain; the skins slip off between thumb and finger. The recipe says to cool them first, which mainly spares scalded fingers — the skins come away readily while the nuts are still warm.
- Dry them thoroughlyThis is the hinge. Blanched almonds hold surface water, and wet nuts steam rather than brown, going leathery instead of crisp. Spread them on a towel or in a low oven until the surface is matte and dry before any fat touches them.
- "A hot oven"Read that as 350–375F for nuts. A genuinely hot oven of the period (425F and up) will scorch the outsides of almonds before the interiors are toasted through. Fifteen to twenty minutes, stirred two or three times, is usually enough.
- Fat quantityHalf a tablespoon of oil per cup of nuts is the recipe's own figure — enough to carry heat and hold salt, not enough to fry. The author gives no reason for preferring oil, though butter's milk solids do darken and burn at roasting heat.
- The stovetop version"Cook them over the fire" means a skillet with more oil, stirring over moderate heat. It is easier to judge by eye, but almonds can go from golden to scorched very quickly, so pull them a shade paler than you want.
- SaltingSalt while the nuts are still hot and glossy with oil, when it adheres best; the recipe says only to 'sprinkle well'. Fine salt sticks better than coarse.
- Yield and keepingA cup of almonds makes a small dish for a few people. The recipe's instruction to spread them on paper to dry and cool matters for storage: any warmth trapped in a closed jar will soften them.
- Reusing the oilThe frugality note holds, but strain the oil and use it within a week or two — nut oils and nut fragments turn rancid faster than the almonds themselves.
Salted almonds belonged to the formal dinner table rather than the candy dish: from the 1880s through the 1920s they were a customary part of formal dinner service, which is why a cookbook of this era treats them as a matter of course. They were often house-made work, and blanching by hand was a routine kitchen chore. Olive oil, recommended over butter, was a slightly cosmopolitan choice for an American household of the period, and valued precisely for the thrift the author points out, that the oil could be strained and used again.