Name: Coventry Puffs
Ingredients: puff pastry; preserves; 1 egg; powdered sugar

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 ↓

Coventry Puffs

Ingredients

puff pastry
preserves
1 egg
powdered sugar

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

Roll the puff pastry into a sheet ½ inch thick.
Cut rounds 3 inches across.
Place a teaspoon of preserves on each round.
Turn up the edges in 3 places to form a triangle and pinch tight.
Place the bottom side up in a buttered pan.

Bake and finish

Wash the tops with a mixture of egg and water.
Dust with powdered sugar.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until 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.

Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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: Provides flaky, layered structure that puffs and separates as it bakes.
Preserves: Adds sweetness and fruity moisture inside the pastry.
Egg: Egg wash gives the tops a glossy surface and helps them brown.
Powdered sugar: Dusting adds a light sweet finish on the surface.

“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.