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Dessert

Lady Fingers

A light sponge cake made with eggs, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt, baked in lady finger pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lady Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and salt, mixing well.

Shape and bake

  1. Spoon the batter into buttered lady finger pans.

  2. Sprinkle the tops with additional powdered sugar.

  3. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until golden.

  4. For sponge drops, drop spoonfuls of batter onto a buttered pan.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the batter lightness and structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and adds a fine sweet crust on top when sprinkled.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Whipped eggs hold the air that lifts the batter in the oven. If they are under-beaten, the ladyfingers come out dense and flat.

“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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