Name: Ramakins Pastry
Ingredients: leftover puff pastry or 1 batch of puff pastry; Parmesan cheese (grated, ½ the weight of the pastry); 1 egg yolk (for brushing)

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,368 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Ramakins Pastry

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

leftover puff pastry or 1 batch of puff pastry
Parmesan cheese (grated, ½ the weight of the pastry)
1 egg yolk (for brushing)

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

If using leftover pastry, ensure it is good quality; otherwise, make a small batch of puff pastry.
Grate half the weight of the pastry in Parmesan cheese.
Roll out the pastry evenly and sprinkle the cheese lightly over it.
Fold the pastry in thirds and roll it out lightly; repeat once or twice until the cheese is well mixed.

Shape and bake

Use a small pastry cutter to stamp out shapes from the pastry.
Brush the tops with egg yolk.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

Serve

Serve immediately, neatly arranged on a hot napkin.

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.

Parmesan cheese + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,368 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry: Its layers of fat and dough puff apart in the oven, creating a light, flaky structure.
Parmesan cheese: Adds savoury, salty flavour and browns during baking for a deeper colour.
Egg yolk: Brushed on top, it promotes even browning and a glossy finish.

“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.