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Almond Custards

A custard made with cream, spices, almonds, and egg yolks, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Almond Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Almond Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Combine the cream, cinnamon, mace, lemon peel, nutmeg, and sugar in a saucepan; boil for 10 minutes, then strain.

  2. Blanch the Jordan and bitter almonds, then rub them through a fine sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Add the almond pulp to the strained cream along with the syrup of roses and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Pour the mixture into small cups or a baking dish lined with puff pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, silky body to the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a soft, sliceable texture.
Jordan almonds
Supply the main almond flavour and body once rubbed into the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and richness of the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg yolks set with heat, so the custard should be baked only until it firms at the edges and barely wobbles in the centre. Overbaking can make it curdle, grainy and watery as the proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup. 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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