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Dessert

Rum Rings

Rum Rings are small pastry rings made with flour, butter, egg yolks, sugar, and rum, topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rum Rings

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Mix in the butter and crumbled egg yolks until well blended.

  3. Add the sugar and Kirsch (or rum).

  4. Gradually add milk to form a stiff dough, being careful not to make it too moist.

  5. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into rings.

Bake and store

  1. Place the rings on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Brush the tops with sweetened milk and sprinkle with grated almonds.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done, checking for doneness based on thickness and size.

  4. Store in a tin for 2-3 days before eating.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rum + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once bound with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough rich and tender.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough into a smooth, cohesive texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the rings brown in the oven.
Kirsch or rum
Adds aroma and flavour that carries through the baked rings.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk to form a stiff dough. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to roll thinly, and it spreads or toughens during baking. Adding milk slowly lets you stop once the dough holds together.

“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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