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Maids of Honour

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and coconut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 375 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Maids of Honour

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a two-quart saucepan, warm the butter until soft.

  2. Beat the butter with a wooden spoon until it becomes white and creamy.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat for a few more minutes.

  4. Add the whole eggs one at a time, and the yolks two at a time, beating well after each addition.

  5. Weigh and lightly mix in the prepared potatoes, grated coconut, and lemon gratings.

  6. Set the mixture aside to cool.

  7. For the puff paste, work the butter on a pastry slab to remove moisture.

  8. Rub about 1 ounce of butter into the flour, then make a well in the center.

  9. Add the lemon juice and water, mixing to form a compact paste similar in consistency to the butter.

  10. Cover the paste with a wet napkin and let it rest for 10 minutes.

  11. Mold the paste into a round ball and roll it out to the desired thickness.

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. Potato + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, coconut, lemon, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, coconut, lemon, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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