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Dessert

Almond Sauce

A sauce made from sweet and bitter almonds, orange flower water, egg yolks, cream, and sugar, served with pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Place the almonds in a mortar with the orange flower water and grind to a pulp.

  3. Transfer the almond pulp to a clean saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the cream, beaten egg yolks, and sugar to the saucepan.

  2. Whisk over moderate heat until smooth and frothy.

Serve

  1. Serve with pudding.

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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour as they are ground into a pulp.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce a silky, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the almond flavour.

The step that matters

Whisk over moderate heat until smooth and frothy. Egg yolks can scramble if the heat is too high or they are not kept moving. Gentle, constant whisking lets them thicken the cream into a smooth sauce rather than curdled lumps.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, 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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