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Dessert

Petits Fours

A small pastry made from honey, spices, and flour, baked until golden and glazed with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Petits Fours

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the honey until it bubbles, then remove from heat.

  2. Add half the flour, spices, potash, and ammonia, all finely ground.

  3. Mix well, then add the remaining flour and knead the dough on a table.

  4. Place the dough in a cool bowl and refrigerate for eight days.

  5. After eight days, knead the dough again to make it light.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick on a lightly floured surface.

  2. Cut into squares or diamonds as desired.

  3. Glaze with beaten egg and place a piece of candied orange peel on each piece.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps bind the dough together.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure once kneaded.
Potash
Acts as a leavening agent, helping the dough rise and lighten.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, helping the dough rise and lighten.
Egg
Gives the glaze a golden sheen and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Knead the dough again after the eight-day rest. Kneading again before shaping knocks out gas from the leavening and redistributes it, so the cookies rise evenly and become light rather than dense.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, egg. 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.

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