Skip to main content

Petits Fours

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Petits Fours

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a low oven until pale.

  2. Cook the sugar with a little water until it reaches a soft ball stage, then set aside.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, gradually adding the powdered sugar while continuing to whip.

  4. Once well combined, gently fold in the melted chocolate and remaining water using a spatula.

  5. Pipe the mixture onto wax paper using a pastry bag.

  6. Bake in a very low oven until set.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

You might also like