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Dessert

Almond Custards

A custard made with cream, spices, almonds, and rose syrup, baked in cups or puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Almond Custards

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Almond Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavoured cream

  1. Boil the cream with cinnamon, mace, lemon peel, and nutmeg, adding sugar to taste.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Blanch the almonds.

Make the custard

  1. Pound the almonds.

  2. Rub the almond pulp through a sieve.

  3. Add the almond pulp to the cream mixture.

  4. Stir in a little syrup of roses and the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Pour the mixture into small cups or a dish lined with puff pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderately heated oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Gives the custard its rich body and smooth, soft texture once set.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard when gently heated, setting it into a soft, sliceable texture.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the custard through their ground pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the spices and cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks gently. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture should be combined smoothly and not overheated before baking. Adding them to very hot cream or baking too hot can curdle or scramble the custard, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, almond, syrup. 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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