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Dessert

Almond Creams

A custard made from sweet and bitter almond paste, milk or cream, sugar, lemon rind, corn flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond base

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds to a paste.

  2. Mix loaf sugar with lemon rind and add to the almond paste.

Thicken and finish

  1. Rub corn flour into the milk (or cream) until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the mixture and combine well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and heat, stirring constantly until it thickens without boiling.

  4. Whisk the egg whites and place a little on top of each serving.

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

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet and bitter almonds
Provide the main flavour and the body of the cream once pounded to a paste.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk or cream so the mixture sets smoothly when heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it thicken when gently heated.
Egg whites
Whisked and added on top, giving a light, airy topping for each serving.

The step that matters

Heating the custard without boiling. Egg yolks and corn flour thicken as the mixture heats, but boiling can curdle the eggs and leave the cream grainy. Constant stirring keeps heat even and stops it from catching on the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, corn, flour, milk, egg. 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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