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St. Honors À LA Rose Delmonico

A chestnut and cinnamon cake flavored with rum, baked in a mold and served with a rum‑cinnamon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and cinnamon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

St. Honors À LA Rose Delmonico

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 chestnut base

  1. In a saucepan, combine chestnuts and cinnamon. Cook over the fire for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a bowl, stir in corn-starch and powdered sugar, and place over low heat for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

  3. Once cooled, mix in egg yolks and whole egg with a wooden spatula until well combined.

Bake

  1. Butter a 3-pint square mold and dust with powdered sugar. Pour in the chestnut mixture.

  2. Place the mold in a tin pastry pan filled halfway with cold water. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the mold from the pan and invert onto a hot dessert dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix egg yolks, powdered sugar, water, and ground cinnamon in a saucepan. Stir constantly over medium heat for 5 minutes without boiling.

  2. Add rum to the sauce, mix well, and pour over the cake. Serve hot.

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. Chestnut + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Chestnut + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Chestnuts
Provide the main body and flavor of the cake's base.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the cake structure.
Corn-starch
Thickens the chestnut mixture so it holds its shape when baked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce become smooth and glossy.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished sauce poured over the cake.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over medium heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if they get too hot they scramble and curdle. Stirring constantly and keeping the heat moderate keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, corn, sugar, egg, butter, rum):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, corn, sugar, egg, butter, rum. 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.

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