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Dessert

Almond Custards

A custard made with cream, spices, almonds, and egg yolks, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Almond Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Almond Custards

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the cream with cinnamon, mace, lemon peel, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Blanch and pound the almonds, then rub them through a sieve.

  4. Add the almond pulp to the cream mixture.

  5. Stir in a little syrup of roses and the beaten egg yolks.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into small cups or a dish with a rim of puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, soft texture.
Egg yolks
Coagulate in the oven to set the custard into a sliceable, creamy structure.
Jordan almonds
Add nutty flavor and body to the custard through their pounded pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and richness of the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg yolks set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Baking too long or too hot can curdle the custard and make it grainy or watery, so remove it once it is just firm.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup. 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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