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Dessert

Almonds

A custard made with cream, eggs, wine, almond paste, sugar, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Beat and strain the eggs.

  3. Stir the eggs into the cream until just about to boil. Add the sweet wine.

  4. Continue stirring until it curdles.

  5. Strain off the whey.

  6. Pound the curd with almond paste and powdered sugar.

  7. Place the mixture into patty pans or small fancy molds.

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds in hot water.

  2. Pound the almonds with sugar candy in a mortar.

  3. Add enough water to form a fine paste without oiling.

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

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

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

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

  3. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate when stirred into hot cream, setting the mixture into a curd.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, tender texture.
Almond paste
Adds almond flavour and body to the pounded curd.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body of the paste.
Sugar candy
Sweetens the almond paste and helps it form a smooth mixture when pounded.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the cream until just about to boil. Egg proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too fast a rise can make the eggs scramble or curdle unevenly, so the curd turns grainy rather than smooth. Keep the heat low and stir steadily.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, wine, almond, 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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