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 Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the almonds
Pour boiling water over the almonds and cover until the skins come off easily.
Remove the skins and pound the almonds very fine.
Make the cream
In an earthenware saucepan, combine sugar and fresh cream.
Heat until it begins to boil.
Mix in the egg yolks with a few spoonfuls of cream set aside.
Stir until it begins to cook.
Pour it out.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,130 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Provides nutty flavour and a fine, body-giving texture once pounded.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
- Fresh cream
- Supplies fat and moisture, giving the cream its smooth, rich body.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the mixture as their proteins set with gentle heat.
The step that matters
Mix in the egg yolks with a few spoonfuls of cream set aside. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so they can curdle if added to hot cream directly. Mixing them first with a little cream tempers them, and stirring gently until the mixture just begins to cook keeps it smooth.
Swap the almond
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg):
- Almondthe original
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Chestnutfits less well
- Pecansfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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