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Dessert

Almonds — Continued

A chilled almond custard made with cream, blanched almonds, eggs, sugar, gelatin, and almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Almonds — Continued

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Whip 12 pints of cream until only 5 pints remain, with the rest in stiff froth.

  2. Pound 1 pint of blanched sweet almonds in a mortar.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the pounded almonds with the unwhipped cream and add 3 beaten eggs and 1 teacup of sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Add gelatin, remove from heat, and pour through a sieve into a basin.

  4. Stir in 5 teaspoons of essence of almonds and whisk until thickened.

Set and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream, stir well, and pour into moulds packed in ice.

  2. Once set and firm, turn out onto a dish and serve with whipped cream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the custard as they heat and help it set firm.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Adds richness and a light texture, with whipped portions giving airiness.
Blanched sweet almonds
Pounded almonds give the pudding its body and nutty flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the almond flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the custard. Heating the egg and cream mixture gently while stirring keeps the eggs from scrambling and lets the custard thicken evenly. Overheating can curdle the eggs and leave a grainy texture.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, 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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