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 Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the almonds
Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.
In a pan over medium heat, stir the almonds continually until they turn a fine yellow color.
Remove from heat and let cool.
Pound the cooled almonds into fine pieces.
Make the cream
Add nearly boiling cream or rich milk and sugar to the almond mixture.
Stir until well combined.
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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Cream + sugartop 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).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Provide the main almond flavor and the body of the cream once pounded fine.
- Bitter almonds
- Add a deeper, sharper almond aroma that sweet almonds alone lack.
- Cream or rich milk
- Supplies fat and moisture, giving the mixture a smooth, rich texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the almonds.
The step that matters
Stir the almonds until fine yellow. Toasting almonds over medium heat develops aroma through browning reactions, but too little gives a flat flavor and too much turns them bitter and burnt. Stirring constantly keeps the nuts from scorching unevenly.
Swap the almond
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar):
- Almondthe original
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Hazelnutfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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