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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with cream, cinnamon, mace, almonds, rose water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Heat the cream with the cinnamon and mace in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Make the custard

  1. Blanch the almonds and grind them finely in a mortar with rose water.

  2. Mix the almond paste with the cooled cream and sweeten to taste.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  4. Pour the custard into cups and let it set.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cream
Provides the rich base and fat that give the custard its smooth, creamy body.
Almonds
Supply the nutty flavour and body of the custard once ground into a paste.

The step that matters

Heating the custard without boiling. Stirring over low heat keeps the mixture from overheating. Egg-free custards thicken mainly through gentle heating and the almond solids, so boiling can break the texture, leaving it grainy or thin.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, almond, rose, 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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