Skip to main content
Dessert

Petits Fours

A sugar glaze flavored with lemon juice and liqueur, used to coat petits fours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Petits Fours

Ingredients

Directions

Make the glaze

  1. In a saucepan, cook 1 ¾ pounds of sugar to 40 degrees.

  2. Remove from heat and add the juice of ½ lemon.

  3. Let it cool completely, then work it with a spatula until it whitens on the sides of the pan.

  4. Add a few drops of liqueur or flavoring.

  5. If the mixture is too thick, add a few tablespoons of syrup at 32 degrees to reach the desired consistency.

Glaze and finish

  1. Heat very lightly.

  2. Place the glazed items on racks and transfer them to a warm oven.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Cooked to a syrup, it forms the thick, sweet, opaque coating that sets on the items.
Lemon juice
Its acidity helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents grainy crystals from forming.
Liqueur or flavoring
Adds aroma and flavor to the glaze in just a few drops.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before working it. Sugar syrup stirred while still hot forms large, coarse crystals and turns gritty. Cooling fully before working it with a spatula encourages fine crystals, which give the glaze its smooth, whitened texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes