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Dessert

Pastry Sandwiches

A pastry sandwich made with tuff-paste and jam, baked and finished with egg white and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pastry Sandwiches

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.

Prepare

  1. Roll out the tuff-paste thinly.

  2. Place half of the paste on a baking sheet and spread the jam evenly over it.

  3. Cover the jam with another thin layer of paste and press the edges together.

  4. Mark the surface of the paste with a knife to indicate where to cut after baking.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes to ½ hour.

  2. A few minutes before done, remove from the oven, brush with egg white, sprinkle with sifted sugar, and return to the oven to color.

  3. Once cooled, cut into 2-inch strips and arrange them in a pyramid shape on a dish.

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. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tuff-paste
Forms the thin pastry layers that enclose the jam and crisp during baking.
Jam
Provides sweetness and moisture that fills the pastry between the layers.
Egg white
Brushed on top to help the surface brown and take on a glossy finish.
Sifted sugar
Sprinkled on top to add sweetness and help the surface color in the oven.

The step that matters

Returning the sandwiches to the oven after the egg white and sugar. Sugar and egg white brown quickly at high heat, so timing matters. Too long and the top darkens or burns before the pastry is set.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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