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Dessert

To Make an Almond Posset

A sweet, creamy dessert made by steeping bread in milk, adding cream, almonds, rosewater, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make an Almond Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Pour boiling milk over the finely crumbled bread and let it stand for 2-3 hours.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Add cream, beaten almonds, and rosewater. Mix thoroughly.

Cook the custard

  1. Heat over a slow fire for 15 minutes without boiling.

  2. Allow to cool.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

  5. Stir over low heat until thickened, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Pour into a china bowl.

  2. Garnish with macaroons before 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Bread
Soaked in hot milk, it thickens the base and gives the posset body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, silky texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they gently set with heat, giving it structure.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the base.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened, but do not boil. Egg yolks set when heated, but boiling can curdle them and leave the posset grainy. Gentle, steady heat keeps it smooth and thick.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Cocoafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, cream, 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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