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Finger Biscuit with Pistachios

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Finger Biscuit with Pistachios

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Press the biscuit paste onto parchment paper in oval-shaped strips, 1¾ inches long and ¾ inch wide.

  2. Dust the strips with fine granulated sugar.

  3. Bake until golden.

  4. Cover the tops with Italian meringue and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

  5. Alternatively, before baking, strew the biscuits with fine-chopped almonds mixed with sugar and omit the meringue.

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. Pistachio + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Biscuit + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, pistachio):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Mixed nutsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, pistachio. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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