Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓
Sugar Pretzels
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the dough
Roll out puff pastry to ½ inch thick.
Cut into strips 1 inch wide and 12 inches long using a pastry cutter.
Wash with egg wash and form into pretzels.
Coat and bake
Lay them in granulated sugar, egg side down.
Place on baking pans, sugar side up.
Bake in a solid oven at 400°F (200°C).
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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Egg + sugartop 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
- Puff pastry
- Its layers of fat and dough puff apart in the oven, giving a flaky structure.
- Egg
- The egg wash browns the surface and gives the pastry a glossy finish.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds sweetness and a crunchy, caramelized coating on the outside.
The step that matters
Lay them in granulated sugar, egg side down.. The sticky egg wash is what holds the sugar to the pastry. Pressing the egg side into the sugar gives an even coating that browns and crisps in the oven.
“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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