Skip to main content
Dessert

Pastry Sandwiches

A puff pastry sandwich filled with jam, baked and topped with egg white and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pastry Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Roll out the puff pastry thinly.

  2. Place half of the pastry on a baking sheet and spread your chosen jam evenly over it.

  3. Cover the jam with another layer of thin pastry, pressing the edges together.

  4. Mark the surface with a knife to indicate where to cut after baking.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Shortly before done, remove from the oven, brush with egg white, and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  3. Return to the oven to color.

  4. Once cooled, cut into 2-inch strips and arrange in a pyramid on a dish.

  5. Serve with flavored whipped cream poured in the center.

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. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered sandwich shell that puffs and crisps in the oven.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity moisture between the pastry layers.
Egg white
Brushed on top to help the surface brown and give a glossy finish.
Sifted sugar
Sprinkled on top to caramelize and add a sweet, crisp coating.

The step that matters

Brushing with egg white and returning to the oven. Timing matters: the glaze and sugar should be added shortly before the pastry is done so they brown and caramelize without burning. Too early and the sugar can darken excessively; too late and the top will not color properly.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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

“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.

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes