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Almond Custailds

A sweet almond custard made with almonds, sugar, cream, rose water, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Almond Custailds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds and beat them into a smooth paste with 1 tablespoon of water, adding a few drops as needed.

Make the custard

  1. Combine the rose-water, cream, beaten yolks, almonds, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Place the bowl over boiling water and stir until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve in cups.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with gentle heat, giving the custard body.
Cream
Provides richness and moisture, so the custard stays smooth and tender.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and body from the paste that is stirred into the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water. Egg yolks set at low temperatures, so the custard can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot. Gentle, constant stirring over simmering water thickens it evenly.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, rose, egg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, rose, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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