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Dessert

Lady Fingers

Lady Fingers are light, sweet sponge cakes shaped like fingers, made from eggs, sugar, flour, and floral water, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lady Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Whip the egg whites to a firm snow.

  2. Beat the yolks with powdered sugar for at least one hour.

  3. Mix the yolks and whites together, then fold in the sifted flour. Stir in the rose or orange-flower water until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Prepare tin plates greased with white wax.

  2. Fill a funnel with the batter and pipe out finger-sized cakes onto the plates.

  3. Sprinkle white sugar over each cake and let them sit until the sugar melts.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until they are lightly colored.

Finish

  1. Once cool, remove from the tin and arrange them back to back.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  5. Flour + rosetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped whites give the batter its airy structure, and the yolks add richness and body.
Powdered sugar
Beaten with the yolks, it sweetens the batter and helps give it a fine, smooth texture.
Sifted flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking and gives the cakes their firm shape.
Rose or orange-flower water
Adds a delicate floral aroma that flavors the cakes.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to a firm snow. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks, since their trapped air is what makes the batter light. Under-whipped whites deflate, and the cakes come out dense and flat.

“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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