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Dessert

Almond Custards

A custard made with sweet and bitter almonds, cream, rose water, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Almond Custards

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 ↓

Almond Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and heat the sweet and bitter almonds with the water.

  2. Heat the cream with the rose water.

Make the custard

  1. Add the egg yolks and sugar to the cream mixture.

  2. Stir in the almonds and cook over low heat until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Pour the mixture into cups.

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

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

  2. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they gently set with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, full body through its fat.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty flavour and a rich, creamy body.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, more pronounced almond aroma.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard to taste.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set gently. Too much heat makes them curdle or turn grainy, so the custard should be cooked slowly and stopped once it coats a spoon.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, rose, 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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