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Croquant Paste

A stiff sugar-and-flour paste rolled, cut into shapes, and baked as a crisp biscuit garnish for pastries.

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 ↓

Croquant Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the paste

  1. Mix the sugar and flour together.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolks of eggs until it forms a stiff paste.

Shape and dry

  1. Roll out the paste to about ⅛ inch thick and cut into shapes with a pastry cutter.

  2. Let the shapes dry for a short time.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the shapes with the egg white and sprinkle sugar over them.

  2. Place them on a baking sheet and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for a few minutes.

  3. Remove from the baking sheet before they are cold and place on tartlets or other pastries.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg 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

Fine flour
Forms the starch and gluten structure that holds the paste together as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Egg yolks
Bind the flour and sugar into a stiff paste and add richness.
Egg white
Brushed on top to give a glossy, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Remove from the baking sheet before they are cold. The shapes set firm as they cool, so lifting them too late can break them. Lifting them while still warm lets them be moved intact.

“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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