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Little Puff Pastes, or Duchess Cakes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Little Puff Pastes, or Duchess Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Prepare the Nuns' Cakes paste.

  2. Form small balls and place them on greased thin iron plates or tins, spaced apart.

  3. Brush the balls with egg yolks.

  4. Bake in a moderately hot oven at 350°F (175°C).

  5. A moment before they are fully cooked, remove them from the oven and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  6. Return them to the oven to glaze beautifully.

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

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

  2. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

  3. Egg + pistachiotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiothe original

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

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