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Dessert

Cannelons

Cannelons are puff pastry rolls filled with almond mixture, topped with marmalade, sugar, and optional strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Cannelons

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry.

  2. Spread marmalade on the pastry.

  3. Cut the pastry into strips, about 3 inches long and 2/3 inch wide, sealing the ends with a knife.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the cannelons in a hot oven (400°F/200°C) until they are nearly golden.

  2. Remove the cannelons from the oven and drain on a napkin.

  3. Sprinkle fine sugar over the cannelons.

  4. Arrange the cannelons on a dish.

Make the strawberry cannelons

  1. For strawberry cannelons, roll 200 strawberries in 2 tablespoons of pounded sugar.

  2. Place five strawberries in a row on the pastry.

  3. Roll the pastry.

  4. Cut into 4-inch pieces.

Make the almond filling

  1. Prepare the filling by pounding sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Mix the almond mixture with fine sugar, butter, egg yolks, cream, orange flowers, and salt.

  3. Fill the cannelons with the almond mixture.

  4. Bake the filled cannelons as before.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the almond filling.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, slightly bitter aroma that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the almond filling and add richness and a smooth, set texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Strawberries
Supply fresh fruit flavour and juiciness inside the pastry.

The step that matters

Baking the cannelons until nearly golden. Puff pastry relies on steam from its layers to rise and crisp; too low a heat makes it soggy and greasy, while too long a bake burns the sugar on the surface before the pastry is fully cooked.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, lemon, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, lemon, butter, egg, cream. 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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