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Dessert

Almond Cream Meringue

A sweet meringue made with almond paste, milk, sugar, corn starch, butter, and egg whites, flavored with rose.

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 and milk

  1. Scald the almonds, peel, mince, and pound them into a rough paste.

  2. Boil the milk.

Make the cream

  1. Mix the corn starch and sugar together dry, then stir rapidly into the boiling milk.

  2. Remove from heat and add the butter, almonds, rose flavoring, and unbeaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake this mixture on cake sheets as previously instructed.

  2. Make the meringue pink, flavor with vanilla and rose, and sift granulated sugar on top 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

Eggs
Unbeaten whites add body and help the mixture set when baked.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a stable, sliceable cream.
Almonds
Provide the main nutty flavor and body of the cream.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds a lightly browned finish on top.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn starch into the boiling milk. Starch must be dispersed quickly into hot liquid, otherwise it clumps and the cream turns lumpy instead of smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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