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Petits Fours

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Petits Fours

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the biscuits by mixing in vanilla or citrus zest if desired.

  2. Bake the biscuits until firm to the touch and no longer make a sound when pressed.

  3. Remove the biscuits from the oven and let them cool on a wire rack for five minutes.

  4. Carefully remove the paper from the biscuits and place them upside down on a clean surface.

  5. Gently scrape the bottom of the biscuits with a knife to remove any excess crumbs.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  3. Biscuit + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the vanilla

The recipe marks vanilla as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, orange, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Vanillathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, orange, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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