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Dessert

Almond Custard

A custard made with bitter and sweet almonds, milk, cinnamon, lemon rind, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavored milk

  1. Blanch and chop the bitter almonds.

  2. Boil the chopped bitter almonds in the milk with the cinnamon and lemon rind until flavored.

  3. Strain the milk to remove the solids.

  4. Blanch and pound the sweet almonds, then add them to the strained milk.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks well and pour the milk and almond mixture over them.

  2. Place the mixture in an enamelled saucepan over low heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Pour the custard into glasses or a mold immediately.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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 milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the almond flavor and becomes the custard.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty almond flavor and body to the milk once pounded.
Bitter almonds
Infuse the milk with a sharp, intense almond aroma during boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures, and too much heat or too little stirring can curdle the custard into lumps. Keep the heat low and stir constantly until it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, cinnamon, 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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