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Dessert

Josephine's Dessert

A rolled dessert made from a batter of milk, flour, egg yolks, and egg whites, topped with powdered sugar and dried currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Josephine's Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk and flour together until smooth.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light and add to the mixture.

  3. Just before baking, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a skillet and pour in a thin layer of the batter.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar and dried currants on top.

  3. Roll up the dessert and serve with or without sauce.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they trap air and give the dessert a light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the batter as it sets.
Flour
Forms the starch structure that holds the thin batter together when cooked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air, and deflating them by stirring vigorously loses the lift they give. Fold gently and cook soon after mixing so the batter keeps its structure.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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