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Dessert

Burnt Almond Ice Cream

A custard ice cream made with burnt almonds, sugar, milk, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Burnt Almond Ice Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the almond candy

  1. Blanch, split, and dry the almonds in a 300°F oven until light yellow.

  2. Melt the sugar over heat without water until it turns golden syrup color.

  3. Add the hot almonds to the melted sugar, stir gently, and pour onto a platter to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Pound the candy finely and mix it into 3 pints of rich milk.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling, then add the beaten yolks of 10 eggs.

Freeze

  1. Strain the custard into a freezer and freeze, beating well as it sets.

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

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

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sugar
Melts into a golden syrup that caramelises and flavours the almonds and the base.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty body and texture once toasted and pounded into the candy.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharper, aromatic almond flavour that deepens the burnt almond taste.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and gives the ice cream its creaminess.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and smoothness to the frozen texture.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar without water. Dry sugar can go from golden to burnt very quickly. Once it is dark and bitter, it cannot be recovered, so it should be watched closely and removed from heat at the right colour.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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