Skip to main content
Dessert

Light Fruit Sticks

A sweet baked stick made from powdered sugar, flour, eggs, raisins, almonds, and a pinch of ammonia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Fruit Sticks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine powdered sugar and flour.

  2. Add eggs, raisins, almonds, and ammonia; mix until smooth.

  3. Roll out the dough and flatten it.

Shape and bake

  1. Slice the flattened dough and cut it into 1‑inch wide sticks.

  2. Let the sticks stand on pans for about 2 hours.

  3. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly golden.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the sticks together.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, tender texture to the dough.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor throughout the sticks.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent that helps the sticks rise and lighten during baking.

The step that matters

Let the sticks stand on pans for about 2 hours. Resting lets the surface dry slightly so the sticks keep their shape and do not spread in the oven. Skipping the rest can make them flatten and lose definition as they bake.

“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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes