Skip to main content
Dessert

Lady Fingers

A finger-shaped sponge cake with lemon, dipped in chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lady Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  4. Incorporate the eggs and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into rolls the size of your middle finger.

  2. Place on a baking sheet; they will spread to form thin cakes.

  3. Dip in chocolate icing before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and shortening the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the rolls together as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown lightly in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the rolls.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Place on a baking sheet; they will spread to form thin cakes.. The rolls spread considerably as they bake, so they need room on the sheet. Crowding them can cause pieces to merge and bake unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, chocolate. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes