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Dessert

Almond, or Orgeat Lee Cream

A custard-like cream made from sweet and bitter almonds, fresh cream, egg yolks, powdered sugar, and orange-flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond, or Orgeat Lee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Crack the sweet and bitter almonds and bake them in the oven.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar, sprinkling with orange-flower water occasionally.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the pounded almonds with the fresh cream, egg yolks, and powdered sugar.

  2. Stir well, then heat the mixture on the stove until it thickens like custard.

Freeze

  1. Chill the mixture, then pour it into an ice cream maker and churn until frozen.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they heat and set, giving it a custard-like body.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen result a smooth, creamy texture.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty almond flavour and body once pounded into the mixture.

The step that matters

Heating the custard. Egg yolks thicken only gently heated; if the mixture gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Stir steadily and stop heating once it coats a spoon.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cream, egg, sugar. 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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