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Dessert

Macaroon Custard

A custard made with milk, eggs, cornflour, sugar, vanilla, poured over macaroons and topped with ground almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Macaroon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the cornflour with a little milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the cornflour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Whip the eggs and carefully stir them into the milk off the heat to avoid curdling.

  5. Add sugar and vanilla essence to taste.

  6. Place the mixture in a jug and set it in a saucepan of boiling water, stirring until it thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the macaroons in a glass dish.

  2. Once the custard cools enough not to crack the dish, pour it over the macaroons.

  3. Sprinkle ground almonds on top and serve 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Macaroons
Form the base layer that the custard is poured over and soaks into.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the custard that sets when heated.
Eggs
Coagulate on heating to thicken and set the custard.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk by swelling with heat, giving the custard body.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the milk off the heat. Egg proteins set at around simmering temperatures, so adding whipped eggs to very hot milk can scramble them and make the custard curdle. Stirring them in off the heat and thickening gently in a water bath keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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