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Dessert

Almond Custards

A custard made with cream, almonds, spices, and egg yolks, baked in a pastry dish.

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

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 Jordan and bitter almonds.

  4. Rub the almond paste through a sieve and add it to the cream.

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

Bake and serve

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

  2. Bake in a moderately heated oven.

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 fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, soft body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it structure and a creamy texture.
Jordan almonds
Contribute almond paste that flavours the custard and adds body to the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and almond flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so the custard must be cooked gently and evenly. Adding them to very hot cream without care can cause curdling, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth set.

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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