Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Pate D Office, or Confectionery Paste
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.
Prepare the paste
Sift the flour and sugar on a marble slab, making a hollow in the middle.
Add the egg whites into the hollow and mix into a stiff paste.
If the paste is too stiff, add more egg whites.
Knead the paste with your wrists until smooth.
Shape and bake
Roll the paste to a thickness of ¼ inch and cut out desired shapes.
Bake on slightly buttered plates in a 350°F (175°C) oven.
When half done, remove and cut to your desired shapes.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Fine flour
- Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together and lets it be rolled and cut.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the shapes take on color and a crisp surface as they bake.
- Egg whites
- Bind the flour and sugar into a paste and set firmly when baked.
The step that matters
Kneading until smooth. Kneading develops an even, elastic paste with no dry pockets. If the paste is under-worked or too stiff, shapes can crack or bake unevenly.
“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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