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Dessert

Cinnamon Stars

A sweet pastry made with egg whites, cinnamon, sugar, lemon rind, almonds, and flour, shaped into stars and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cinnamon Stars

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Add cinnamon, sugar, and grated lemon rind to the egg whites.

  3. Set aside 1 cup of this mixture.

  4. To the remaining mixture, add chopped almonds (floured) and enough flour to roll.

Shape the cookies

  1. Roll out a small amount at a time and cut with a star cutter.

  2. Place the cut stars on a greased pan.

  3. Spread a little of the reserved mixture on each star.

Bake

  1. Bake quickly and remove from the pan while hot.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 to a froth, they give the dough air and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown at the surface.
Almonds
Add body, a nutty flavour and a tender bite to the dough.
Cinnamon
Adds warm spice aroma and flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the spice.

The step that matters

Bake quickly and remove while hot. Short baking keeps the cookies moist and chewy inside rather than dry and brittle. Lifting them off the pan while hot prevents sticking, because the sugar hardens as the cookies cool.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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