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Dessert

Almond Pudding

A baked pudding made with bitter and sweet almonds, orange‑flower water, brandy, cream, biscuit, butter, egg yolks, sugar, lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the bitter and sweet almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar with orange-flower water and brandy.

  3. Soak the pounded biscuit in rich cream.

  4. Melt the butter.

  5. Beat the egg yolks with pounded sugar and grated lemon peel until very light.

Make the custard

  1. Mix all ingredients well.

  2. Heat over low heat until thoroughly heated but not boiling.

Bake

  1. Bake in a dish lined with puff paste for 30 minutes.

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 + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the pudding once pounded into a paste.
Egg yolks
Set during gentle heating and baking to give the pudding a firm, custard-like structure.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the biscuit and giving a smooth, tender texture.
Pounded biscuit
Soaks up the cream to add body and help thicken the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender crumb.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the egg yolks become light when beaten.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat until thoroughly heated but not boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm but will curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Gentle, low heat keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, brandy, cream, biscuit, butter, 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.

More almond pudding recipes

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