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Dessert

Petits Fours

Petits Fours are small sweet baked treats made from egg yolks, sugar, flour, butter, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Petits Fours

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar over low heat until warm. Continue whisking until the mixture cools.

  2. Gently fold in the flour.

Bake and cool

  1. Spoon the batter into lightly greased small molds.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and let it melt before baking.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked.

  4. Remove from molds and cool on a wire rack.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and structure as they set with heat, giving the petits fours a tender crumb.
Sugar
Whisked with the yolks to build a stable, airy base and add sweetness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cake.

The step that matters

Whisking the yolks and sugar over low heat. Gently warming the yolks and sugar helps them dissolve and thicken into a stable foam. Overheating can scramble the yolks, while under-whisking leaves a dense batter that bakes unevenly.

“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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