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Dessert

Almond Cream

A sweet almond custard made with almond paste, cream, lime peel, eggs, and flavored with orange‑flower or rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Almond Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds, then pound them into a paste with rose water.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with the thinly cut lime peel.

  2. Mix the almond paste with the boiled cream.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and stir over low heat until thick.

  4. Sweeten to taste, then stir in the orange-flower or rose water when nearly cold.

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. Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Almond + limetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cream once pounded into a paste.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished cream.
Eggs
Thicken the mixture as they set when stirred over low heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream, balancing the almond and citrus flavours.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs over low heat. Egg proteins set and thicken gently at low heat; if the mixture gets too hot, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving the cream grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

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