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Croquante Paste

A stiff pastry paste made from flour, sugar, and egg yolks, baked thin and cut into shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Croquante Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the paste

  1. Mix flour and sugar with beaten egg yolks to form a stiff paste.

  2. Butter a flat baking tin.

  3. Roll out the paste very thin and evenly.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the paste into shapes like leaves or stars using a cutter or mold.

  2. Place the shapes on the tin without them touching.

  3. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. While hot, place the baked shapes on top of tarts or other pastries.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the shapes brown and crisp in the oven.
Egg yolks
Bind the flour and sugar into a stiff paste and add richness.

The step that matters

Roll out the paste very thin and evenly. Thin, even pieces bake through at the same rate and crisp evenly. Thick or uneven spots stay soft or over-brown, and the shapes may not hold their form.

“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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