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Dessert

Frangipaxi Cream Patties

A sweet pastry filled with a creamy mixture of cream, flour, orange flower water, brandy, egg yolks, macaroons, sugar, lemon peel, and candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Frangipaxi Cream Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pastry shells and remove the center piece.

  2. Scoop out the soft inside, leaving ½ inch of crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a small saucepan, combine cream, flour, orange flower water, and brandy or sherry.

  2. Boil until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan.

  3. Add more cream or milk if too thick.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks, crumbled macaroons, sugar, lemon peel, and chopped candied fruit.

  5. Set the saucepan in boiling water and stir until very thick.

  6. Let cool before using.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 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

Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smooth, soft body.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture as it boils, giving the filling structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling when gently heated and add richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling.
Brandy or sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, fortified flavor to the filling.
Macaroons
Add body and a sweet, nutty flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling over boiling water. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Setting the saucepan in boiling water heats the mixture gently and indirectly, and constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the yolks thicken smoothly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, orange, brandy, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, orange, brandy, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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