Almonds

Details

The almond for the daily soaked handful and the kitchen jar, sold plain: whole kernels, one grade, nothing rubbed on them. The thing worth understanding about almonds is that the main defect cannot be seen. An almond is about half oil, and that oil turns rancid quietly. A rancid kernel keeps its shape, its colour and its snap, and gives itself away only as a sharp paint-like smell some time after you have bought the kilo, which is precisely why old stock keeps moving through the market and why every shop can sell it in good faith. There is no test you can do at the counter. Peroxide value and free fatty acid are the two numbers that settle it, and they are run on every lot here rather than once a year on a sample. The second move is polish. A dull kernel gets rubbed with oil or paraffin to put a gloss on it, which is mineral oil on food, and MOSH-MOAH is what catches it. The third is grade: an undersized or chipped kernel is worth a good deal less than a whole one, so a premium pack quietly gets padded with it, and kernel count per 100 g is what shows it.

• Peroxide value and free fatty acid tested per lot, so old rancid stock cannot pass
• No oil, wax or paraffin polish, MOSH-MOAH tested
• No undersized, chipped or broken kernel counted into a whole grade
• Aflatoxin tested per lot
• Raw kernels, no salt, no oil and no roasting
• Crop year printed on the pack, not a packing date standing in for one
• They are matte rather than shiny, because nothing has been rubbed on them to make them shine
• Keep the open pack cold, or the same oil that makes an almond worth eating will turn