Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Chesnuts with Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar paste
Boil the sugar until it reaches a blow stage.
Remove from heat and work it as for a conserve.
Beat the egg yolks and add the liqueur.
When the sugar is nearly at conserve stage, mix in the egg yolks until a stiff paste forms.
Shape and finish
On a marble surface, sprinkle fine powdered sugar and roll the mixture into balls shaped like chestnuts.
Mark stripes on the balls to resemble peeled chestnuts.
Use a red-hot piece of iron wire to touch different parts of the chestnuts to imitate roasted fruit and add a caramel flavor.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Clarified sugar
- Cooked to a blow stage, it forms the sweet, firm base of the paste.
- Egg yolks
- Bind the cooked sugar into a stiff paste with richness and added structure.
- Maraschino or other liqueur
- Adds aroma and flavor to the paste.
The step that matters
Mixing the egg yolks into the sugar. Sugar must be near conserve stage before the yolks go in. If it is too hot, the yolks can scramble or cook unevenly, and if it is too cool, the paste will not set into a stiff, shapeable mass.
“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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