It was just mentioned in one of NPR word games as one of the choices that might be a word. The contestant, after some hesitation, picked this as one that is an actual meaning: Mandles is "candles for men"
But I googled it and found many uses.
In The Sting Man: Inside Abscam by Robert W. Greene it characterizes something one would put in soup:
I guess chicken soup with mandles is his favorite dish; he makes it himself for us.
In The MageStaff by Rob McShane it is used for something that might be candles:
The gurbs in the ground, the mandles in the trees and bushes and all the other myriad of life that should have teemed around them.
In Animal Biography, Or, Authentic Anecdotes of the Lives, Manners …, Volume 3 it is used in relation to animals:
Their mandles are thick and horny, and the tail is articulated, and not (as in the Scorpion) armed.
Then it is used as a variant of "sandals" in somethijng that might be an LGBT slang Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television
edited by Thomas Peel:
“Is it her hair? Is it her jog bra? Is it her mandles [a slang, masculine rendering of sandals]?”
It is also something that is sold by a dozen Publications, Issue 30
By Spalding Club, Aberdeen:
6 dozen liveray mandles at …
There is also something in medicine that is called "mandles paint".
Best Answer
The OED gives it as an archaic form of "mandil," "mantel" and "mantle." Mandil is obsolete; the other two are in current use. http://findwords.info/term/mandle
"Mandel" is German for "an almond nut", which might explain the "mandles in the trees" and also "a tonsil" which seems less plausible for your animal reference. Maybe "mandibles" is the modern word there. http://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Mandel%20%5BNuss%20mit%20Schale%5D
"Mandl's paint" was a treatment for tonsillitis. http://drpaulose.com/general/587
For "Mandlen" and chicken soup, see http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/mandlen
The "liveray mandles" ("livery", i.e. part of a uniform?} sold by the dozen are presumably "mantles" of some kind.