Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with milk, bitter almonds, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, egg yolks, and sweet almonds beaten in rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk or cream with bitter almonds, cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar to extract flavor.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the cooled milk mixture.

Thicken and finish

  1. Stir over low heat until thickened.

  2. Add the sweet almonds beaten in rose water and mix well.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that the custard sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and body to the finished custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor to the infused milk.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures, and high heat can scramble them into lumps. Low heat and constant stirring let the custard thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, almond, cinnamon, sugar, egg, rose):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, almond, cinnamon, sugar, egg, rose. 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 custard recipes

Cake 6Pudding 6 See all 141 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes