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 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 the candies
Dust a marble surface with powdered sugar and roll the paste into balls shaped like chestnuts.
Mark stripes on the balls to resemble peeled chestnuts.
Heat a piece of iron wire until red hot and touch it to different parts of the chestnuts to imitate roasted fruit.
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the candy and, once cooked and worked, sets into the stiff paste that holds the shape.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and bind the cooked sugar into a stiff, smooth paste.
- Maraschino or other liqueur
- Adds a distinctive aroma and flavour to the paste.
The step that matters
Mixing the egg yolks into the sugar at the right point. Yolks should go in when the sugar is nearly at conserve stage. If the sugar is too hot, it can cook the yolks into lumps; if it is too cool, the mixture will not come together into a firm, workable paste.
“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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