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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with sugar syrup, egg yolks, almonds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water to make a syrup, then pour it into a jug.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the pounded almonds with the beaten egg yolks thoroughly.

  2. Stir the almond and yolk mixture into the syrup.

  3. Place the jug in a saucepan with boiling water and heat it on the stove, stirring until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into custard glasses and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, and add richness.
Almonds
Provide the nutty flavour and body that the custard is built around.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and, boiled with water, forms the syrup base.

The step that matters

Heating the custard until thickened. Egg yolks set at gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Heating the jug in boiling water in a saucepan keeps the temperature gentle and even, so stir steadily and stop once the mixture thickens.

“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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