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Dessert

Almond Creams

A custard made with almond paste, cream, lemon peel, eggs, and flavored with rose or orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Almond Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds to a paste with rose-water.

Make the cream

  1. Boil the cream with the lemon peel.

  2. Add the almond paste and beaten eggs to the cream.

  3. Stir over low heat until thick, but do not let it boil.

  4. Sweeten to taste, then stir in the orange-flower or rose-water when nearly 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the body and nutty flavour of the cream when pounded into a paste.
Cream
Supplies richness and fat, giving the finished creams a smooth, soft texture.
Eggs
Thicken the cream as they set gently over low heat, giving it a custard-like body.
Orange-flower or rose-water
Adds a delicate floral aroma that flavours the cream without cooking off.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thick, but do not let it boil. Egg proteins set gently around 160°F and curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so the cream thickens smoothly only over low, gentle heat.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, egg, orange, 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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