Why it works: Almond and pine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 176 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
German Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare 1 pint of rich boiled custard.
Blanch, roast, and pound 1 ounce of sweet almonds to a paste.
Add the almond paste and ½ ounce of pine nuts to the custard and mix well.
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.
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Almond + pinetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together176 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together394 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Pine + nutstop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rich boiled custard
- Forms the creamy, smooth base that the other ingredients are folded into.
- Sweet almonds
- Contribute nutty flavour and body once roasted and ground to a paste.
- Pine nuts
- Add a soft, buttery crunch and a mild, resinous nuttiness.
The step that matters
Add the almond paste and pine nuts to the custard. Mixing well distributes the paste evenly so it thickens and flavours the custard uniformly. Clumps left behind leave pockets of dense, grainy texture and uneven flavour.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, pine):
- Pistachiofits better
- Brazil nutfits better
- Cashew nutfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against almond, pine. 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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