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Dessert

Desserts, Custards and Creams

A custard dessert made with almonds, cream, sherry, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Desserts, Custards and Creams

twelve ordinary custard glasses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the almonds and place them in a jug with the cream.

  2. In another jug, combine the sherry, lemon juice, and enough sugar to sweeten the mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Pour rapidly from one jug to the other until well frothed.

  2. Pour the mixture into individual glasses, enough to fill twelve ordinary custard glasses.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the cream once their skins are removed.
Cream
Provides fat and richness for a smooth, velvety texture.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a distinctive flavour that defines the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon juice and sherry.

The step that matters

Pouring rapidly between the jugs. Pouring rapidly from one jug to the other whips air into the liquid. The trapped air bubbles form a foam that gives the custard its light, frothy texture. Pouring slowly or gently adds too little air, so the custard stays dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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