Split some shelled almonds or filberts in two; if almonds are used mince well and roast lightly in the oven, on a baking sheet without letting them color, then mix in with them half their weight of sugar and enough egg-white, so they be entirely covered by the sugar. When the burnt almonds are spread on cakes, they must be covered over with sugar and glazed in a brisk oven.
A nut topping from Ranhofer's foundation chapter, meant to be scattered on cakes and glazed rather than eaten on its own. The whole thing turns on restraint at the roasting stage.
This is the opening entry in the elementary-methods section of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous professional manual he compiled over decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, a post he still held when the book appeared. Praliné covers any nut cooked with sugar, and the word is generally traced to the household of the seventeenth-century French marshal du Plessis-Praslin, whose cook is traditionally credited with the sugared almond that bears the name. Ranhofer's placement may be telling: a garnish this basic sits among the stocks and forcemeats, which suggests, though he does not say so, that a kitchen brigade would keep it ready as a component rather than make it dish by dish. The English heading "burnt almonds" reflects older usage in which burnt simply meant caramelized, which is why the instruction insists the nuts themselves must not color.