Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
To Bake Puff Paste
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.
Ensure the dough is ice cold before baking.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roll the puff paste to ¼ inch thickness and cut into rounds.
Cut a hole in the center of two rounds with a small cutter.
Moisten the edges of each round with a little water.
Place the two rings on top of the whole round, pressing edges lightly together.
Glaze the top with egg, avoiding the edges.
Use small cut pieces for covers after filling the cases.
Bake the pate cases for about 25 minutes and tarts for 15 minutes.
Fill the tart shells with jelly, jam, preserves, or cooled lemon cream.
Serve cold.
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.
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
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