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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with milk, egg yolks, egg whites, sweet almonds, bitter almonds, and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Peel and finely grind the sweet almonds in a mortar.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the boiling milk over the eggs while beating constantly.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to taste and add the ground almonds.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove any lumps.

  4. Return the mixture to the heat and stir until thick, being careful not to let it curdle.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a glass dish with macaroons spread with apricot jam.

  2. Once the custard is cool, pour it into the dish and serve icy-cold.

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 + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it richness.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the beaten base before it is heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body once finely ground and strained.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over heat until thick. Egg proteins set gently as the mixture warms; if it gets too hot or heats too fast, the eggs scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture that straining cannot fully fix.

“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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