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Almond Custards

A custard made with sweet and bitter almonds, milk, cream, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Almond Custards

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 the almonds

  1. Blanch and finely pound the sweet and bitter almonds with ½ cup Pose Water.

  2. Rub the almonds through a fine sieve with 1 pint of cream.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk and sweeten it with 2½ ounces of sugar.

  2. Strain the milk into a bowl with the yolks of 8 eggs and the beaten whites of 3 eggs.

  3. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir until nearly cold to prevent curdling.

Finish

  1. Optionally, bake in cups or a dish with puff pastry around the edges.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provides the main almond flavour and body once pounded and sieved into the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently over low heat.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the custard set with a delicate texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the sugar and flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smoother, silkier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the bitterness of the almonds.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat or a lack of stirring can scramble the eggs and curdle the custard. Gentle, constant stirring keeps it smooth as it thickens.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream, egg. 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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