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Almond Butter

A homemade almond butter made by curdling cream with wine and blending with almond paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and strain them.

  3. Stir the eggs into the cream until just about to boil.

  4. Add the sweet wine and continue stirring until it curdles.

Shape and serve

  1. Strain off the whey and pound the curd with almond paste and powdered sugar.

  2. Transfer the mixture into patty pans or small fancy molds.

  3. Serve with bread or sweet zests.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the set curd a smooth, soft texture.
Eggs
Coagulate with heat to set the curd and give it structure.
Sweet wine
Its acidity helps the cream curdle, separating curd from whey.
Almond paste
Adds almond flavour and body to the pounded curd.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the curd.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the cream. Heat must stay low and the mixture should only approach boiling. Overheating makes egg proteins tighten and turn grainy instead of forming a smooth, set curd.

Swap the almond

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

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

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