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Dessert

Almond Cream

A custard-like dessert made with almonds, cream, milk, lemon juice, and candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds with 1 teaspoon of water to prevent oiling.

  2. Combine the almond paste with 1 quart of cream and the juice of 3 lemons, sweetening to taste.

  3. Whisk the mixture until frothy.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve into glasses.

Make the alternative cream

  1. For an alternative, pound 14 oz of sweet almonds with 1 oz each of candied citron and lemon peel.

  2. Rub 2 tablespoons of flour into 1 quart of milk.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of 5 eggs to the mixture.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

  5. Mix in the almond and peel mixture.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve 2 or 3 times.

  7. Heat the mixture until almost boiling.

Glaze and serve

  1. Pour it into a serving dish.

  2. Glaze with egg whites and sugar.

  3. Place the glazed dish in a 300°F (150°C) oven to dry the glaze.

  4. Serve hot or 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty almond flavour of the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness when heated.
Flour
Helps stabilise the milk mixture and give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet almond flavour.
Egg whites
Form a glaze that browns and dries in the oven.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until almost boiling. Heating thickens the egg yolks and flour together. Overheating can curdle the eggs or scorch the milk, so it should be watched closely and kept just below a boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cream, sugar, flour, milk, 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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