Skip to main content
Sauce

Almond Sauce

A custard-based almond sauce flavored with ratafia essence, brandy, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Brandy and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Almond Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds and pound them smoothly.

  2. Pour the milk over the pounded almonds and let them stand for about an hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the almond mixture to the custard along with the ratafia essence and brandy. Stir well to combine.

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. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  3. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

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

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 nutty flavour and body of the sauce once pounded.
Medium or rich custard
Forms the creamy base that carries the almond flavour.
Milk
Softens the pounded almonds and helps them blend smoothly into the custard.
Brandy
Adds a warm aromatic note that complements the almond flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding the almonds smoothly. Almonds left in coarse pieces will leave a gritty texture in the sauce. Fine pounding, helped by the soaking milk, lets the almond flavour and body disperse evenly through the custard.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, milk):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, milk. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes