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Dessert

Almond and Macaroon Custard

A custard made from milk, bitter almonds, eggs, and powdered sugar, topped with macaroons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and almond 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 ↓

Almond and Macaroon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond milk

  1. Boil ½ pint of rich milk with a handful of blanched and broken bitter almonds until highly flavored.

  2. Strain the milk and set it aside.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk by itself and let it cool.

  2. Slowly stir in the 8 beaten eggs and the flavored milk.

  3. Add 1 pint of powdered sugar and stir vigorously.

  4. Bake in cups until done and completely cool.

Serve

  1. Top each custard with a macaroon and place 4 additional macaroons around it.

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

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

  2. Almond + sugartop 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a tender, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the custard.
Bitter almonds
Infuse the milk with a strong almond aroma and flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the liquid base.
Macaroons
Add a crisp, chewy contrast and extra almond sweetness as a topping.

The step that matters

Bake in cups until done and completely cool. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the custard grainy, watery, or rubbery. Cooling fully lets the custard firm up and hold its shape.

Swap the almond

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

  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 milk, 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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