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Dessert

Lady-fingers

Lady Fingers are light sponge biscuits made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, egg whites, and flour, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lady-fingers

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and powdered sugar together until creamy.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture.

  4. Lightly mix in the sifted flour until just combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Pipe the batter onto parchment paper on baking sheets or use molds.

  2. Dust the lady-fingers with powdered sugar.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the batter and gives the cookies their light, spongy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness, and their proteins help set the batter as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the yolks, helping them become creamy and smooth.
Flour
Provides the light structure that holds the batter's shape while it bakes.

The step that matters

Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the ladyfingers their lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, so the cookies bake up flat and dense.

“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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