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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with almonds, milk, corn flour, egg yolks, and flavored with orange or rose water.

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 ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond base

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds with the orange or rose water.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and corn flour, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add the pounded almonds and beaten egg yolks to the milk mixture.

  3. Sweeten with sugar to taste and stir over low heat until thickened, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in glass custard cups.

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

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

  3. Almond + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main flavour and body of the custard once pounded into the milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently over low heat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Corn flour
Stabilises the milk mixture so it thickens smoothly and resists curdling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the almonds and yolks thicken into a custard.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures, and boiling causes them to scramble or curdle, leaving the custard grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, corn, 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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