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Dessert

Sticks of Vanilla

Vanilla stick cookies are sweet, shortbread-like sticks flavored with vanilla sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sticks of Vanilla

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, vanilla sugar, and egg yolks for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and melted butter, and mix vigorously until well combined.

Shape the sticks

  1. Fill a biscuit or macaroon forcer with the paste using a piping funnel.

  2. Pipe the paste onto a surface dusted with sifted sugar, cutting into 4 or 5 inch lengths.

  3. Arrange the sticks in parallel rows on a baking sheet lightly greased with white wax.

Bake and finish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake until lightly colored.

  2. Fill a paper cornet with royal icing flavored with vanilla sugar and pipe it onto the sticks.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs yolks
Provide richness, emulsifying power and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the sticks together as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning as the cookies bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolks and sugar. Beating the yolks with sugar for a full 10 minutes traps air and dissolves the sugar, giving the paste the volume needed to hold its shape when piped and to bake up light rather than dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, butter. 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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