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Dessert

Cream of Almond

A creamy almond sauce made by blending blanched almonds with milk and water, garnished with powdered almonds, peanuts, cracker crumbs, or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cream of Almond

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Brown the blanched almonds in a pan until crisp.

  2. Pound the browned almonds finely.

Make the cream

  1. Cook the pounded almonds in a mixture of milk and water for 10 minutes.

  2. Blend the almond mixture with Cream Sauce.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with powdered almonds, peanuts, browned cracker crumbs, or shredded coconut.

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. Peanut + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Almond + peanuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Browned and pounded, they supply the nutty flavor and body of the cream.
Milk
Cooked with the almonds, it adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, sauce, peanut, coconut):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, sauce, peanut, coconut. 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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