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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with milk, sweet and bitter almonds, eggs, and sugar, served with macaroons and apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Grind the sweet and bitter almonds into a fine paste.

  3. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until well combined.

  4. Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Stir in the almond paste until smooth.

  6. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Serve with macaroons and a dollop of apricot jam.

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 + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during gentle cooking, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body as a fine paste suspended in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs thicken.
Egg whites
Listed in the ingredients but no step tells how they are used, so their role here is unclear.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the heat is too high the proteins can scramble and curdle the custard, leaving it grainy.

“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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