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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made from almond paste, cream, sugar, and egg yolks, served with cherries and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds to a paste with the rose water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the almond paste, cream, sugar, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Place the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water over low heat.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens.

Cool and serve

  1. Pour the thickened mixture into a bowl to cool completely.

  2. Serve over drained white cherries soaked in maraschino.

  3. Top with whipped cream.

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. Cream + sugartop 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. Egg + sugartop 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

Almonds
Provide the main flavor and body of the custard as a paste.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the custard a smooth, soft texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving structure and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over gentle heat until it thickens. Egg yolks set at low temperatures, so heat must stay gentle and the mixture must be stirred constantly. Too much heat can scramble the yolks into lumps and leave the custard grainy.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, rose, 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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