Name: Puff-paste Rings, or Wreaths
Ingredients: ½ pound puff-paste; fine sugar; coarse sugar; 1 egg white; currant or apple jelly

Why it works: Sugar and egg 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 ↓

Puff-paste Rings, or Wreaths

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

Give eight turns to the puff-paste and roll it out to ⅙ inch thick.
Stamp out twenty circular pieces, 1¾ inches in diameter, and cut out the centers with a ¾ inch cutter.

Bake and decorate

Place the rings on a wetted baking sheet and sprinkle with fine sugar.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until lightly colored.
Decorate with whipped egg white and coarse sugar, then let dry.
Finish by inserting strips of currant or apple jelly between the decorations.

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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Puff-paste: Its laminated layers of dough and fat puff into flaky, airy rings when baked.
Egg white: Whipped, it forms a glossy coating that helps the coarse sugar adhere and dry on top.
Fine sugar: Sugar on the baking sheet caramelizes slightly, adding browning and sweetness to the base.
Currant or apple jelly: Its sugar and fruit flavor add sweetness and acidity, and it glazes the decorations.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F until lightly colored. Puff pastry relies on steam from its layers of fat and water to lift it, so the oven must be hot enough to set the structure before the butter melts out. Watch color closely, since sugar darkens quickly and can go from golden to bitter.