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Dessert

Orange Hearts

A sweet heart-shaped cake made with sugar, egg yolks, preserved orange peel, almonds, lemon zest, egg whites, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Hearts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter heart-shaped tins and place six sheets of paper under them.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix yolks of eggs, powdered sugar, pounded orange peel, finely pounded almonds with rose water, and lemon raspings until it forms a light paste.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the paste.

  3. Sift the flour and carefully stir it into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake in the oven until set.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake's texture.
Yolks of eggs
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the paste together.
Flour
Provides structure as the batter sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb.
Sweet almonds
Add body, fat and a nutty flavour to the paste.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites are full of trapped air. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, while vigorous stirring knocks it out and leaves a denser cake.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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