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Dessert

Almond Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with almonds, egg yolks, cream, milk, water, sugar, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup and almonds

  1. Boil the water and sugar together for 25 minutes.

  2. Stir the almonds over the fire until they are a rich brown, then remove them from the fire.

  3. Pound the almonds to a paste in a mortar.

Make the custard

  1. Cook the milk and powdered almonds in a double boiler for 20 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the boiling syrup.

  3. Beat this mixture for 4 minutes while the basin is in boiling water, then take it from the fire.

  4. Gradually beat in the almonds and milk.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve, rubbing through as much as possible.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir occasionally while cooling.

  2. When cold, add the cream and lemon extract.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that softens the ice cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Almonds
Provide the main flavor, with toasting adding a deeper, nutty aroma.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the almond flavor into the custard.

The step that matters

Beating the yolks into the hot syrup. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding yolks to very hot liquid too quickly can scramble them. Stirring steadily while the mixture thickens over boiling water keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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