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Sweet Sauces

A sweet sauce made from almond paste, milk, flour, egg yolk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil ½ pint of rich milk.

  2. Pour a little boiling milk onto the almond paste to soften it.

  3. Mix the almond paste with a fork until well combined.

  4. Pour the rest of the boiling milk onto the almond and milk mixture.

  5. Mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a little cold milk and add it to the almond and milk mixture.

  6. Let it boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and wait 1 minute.

  7. Stir in the egg yolk and return to heat, stirring until it reaches boiling point.

  8. Add sugar to taste and serve with any sweet 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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Almond paste
Provides the main almond flavour and body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, coating texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and thickens it further when heated gently.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base that the almond paste and flour are combined into.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Once the egg yolk is stirred in, the sauce must be heated only until it thickens and reaches boiling point. Overheating can cause the yolk to scramble, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, 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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