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Dessert

Cinnamon Sticks

A sweet pastry made from flour, egg whites, sugar, cinnamon, and ground almonds, baked into sticks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Sticks

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, egg whites, sugar, ground cinnamon, and ground almonds.

  2. Roll out the dough long and flat, about 3 inches wide.

  3. Cut the rolled dough into 1-inch long pieces.

Decorate and bake

  1. Decorate with royal icing in various colors.

  2. Place on floured pans and bake until lightly 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.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Ground almonds
Add body, nutty flavor, and a tender crumb to the dough.
Flour
Provides the main structure so the dough holds its shape when rolled and cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly golden. Baking at a low 300°F dries the sticks gradually and browns them slowly. Pulling them too early leaves them soft, while overbaking makes them hard and dark.

“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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