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Dessert

Pecan Strips

A sweet baked strip made with eggs, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pecan Strips

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs with brown sugar and cook in a double boiler, stirring until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Cool the mixture, then stir in the baking powder, flour, vanilla, and pecans.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a biscuit pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Cut into 1‑inch wide strips and dust with powdered sugar.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a tender, cake-like structure as they cook.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the bars brown and stay soft.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the baked strips together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the strips rise and turn light rather than dense.
Pecans
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Cool the cooked mixture before adding the dry ingredients. If the egg and sugar mixture is still hot, the baking powder can react too quickly and lose lift, and the flour can cook unevenly. Letting it cool first keeps the batter stable so the strips bake up light and uniform.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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