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Dessert

Almond Fraze

A custard-like almond cake made with blanched almonds, cream, eggs, sugar, bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Almond Fraze

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Steep the blanched almonds in cream and eggs.

  2. Remove the almonds and pound them finely in a mortar.

  3. Mix the pounded almonds back into the cream and eggs.

  4. Add sugar and grated white bread, stirring well.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat fresh butter in a pan until hot.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Transfer to a dish and sprinkle with sugar.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the dish once pounded fine.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the batter.
Egg yolks
Thicken the batter as it heats and add richness.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the batter set.
Grated white bread
Soaks up liquid and gives the batter body.

The step that matters

Stirring while the batter thickens. Egg proteins set as they heat, so stirring constantly in the hot butter keeps the batter smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the pan base.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, sugar, bread, butter. 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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