Skip to main content

Chantilly Basket

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chantilly Basket

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil warm clarified sugar until it reaches a caramel height.

  2. Dip ratafia cakes into the caramel and place them around the inside of a dish.

  3. Cut more ratafia cakes into squares and dip them into the caramel.

  4. Pile the dipped squares on top of the other cakes.

  5. Line the inside with wafer paper.

  6. Fill the basket with sponge biscuits, sweetmeats, blanched almonds, and cream.

  7. Top with trifle froth and garnish with rose leaves or colored comfits.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, biscuit, cream, rose):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, biscuit, cream, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes