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Dessert

Almond Cream Meringue

A dessert of almond cream baked with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Almond Cream Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Scald the almonds.

  2. Peel the almonds.

  3. Mince the almonds.

  4. Pound the almonds into a rough paste.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Mix the corn starch and sugar together dry.

  3. Stir the dry mixture rapidly into the boiling milk.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Add the butter, almond paste, rose extract, and unbeaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the mixture on prepared cake sheets as directed.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Color and flavor the meringue with vanilla and rose.

  4. Sift granulated sugar on top of the meringue before baking.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard its body.
Almonds
Provide nutty flavor and a paste that adds body to the custard.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten and set into a light structure when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry starch mixture into the boiling milk. Starch clumps when it meets hot liquid without being dispersed first. Adding it quickly and stirring constantly spreads the starch evenly so the custard thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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