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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with milk, potato flour, egg yolks, sugar, almonds, gelatine, and almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the potato flour smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk and pour it over the potato flour, stirring continuously.

  3. Return the mixture to the stove and simmer gently for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the sugar and egg yolks, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  5. Dissolve the gelatine in a little hot water and add it to the custard, then strain.

Finish

  1. Stir in the chopped almonds and add almond essence to taste.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Almond + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Potato flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard without lumps.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it thicken as it heats.
Gelatine
Sets the custard so it holds its shape when cooled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickeners set into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if the custard is too hot or stirred too little. Adding them to a thickened, gently heated mixture while stirring keeps them smooth and lets the custard thicken evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, flour, sugar, egg, 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.

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