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Dessert

Puff-paste Rings, or Wreaths

Puff pastry rings baked, then decorated with whipped egg white, sugar, and currant or apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Puff-paste Rings, or Wreaths

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather sharp oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rings

  1. Give eight turns to the puff pastry and roll it out to ⅙ inch thick.

  2. Stamp out twenty circular pieces using a fluted cutter about 1¾ inches in diameter.

  3. Stamp out the center of these with a plain cutter about ¾ inch in diameter.

  4. Place the rings on a wetted baking sheet and sprinkle with fine sugar.

Bake and decorate

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until very light in color.

  2. Decorate with whipped egg white and sugar.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.

  4. Let them dry.

  5. Finish decorating by inserting strips of currant or apple jelly between the folds.

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

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

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Puff pastry
Its many laminated layers puff up into flaky, separated sheets as the water in the dough turns to steam.
Whipped egg white
Forms a light glaze that dries to a crisp, pale surface on the rings.
Fine sugar
Sprinkled on the baking sheet, it caramelizes and adds sweetness and light browning.
Coarse sugar
Adds a crunchy, sparkling sweet topping on the glazed surface.
Currant or apple jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity flavor and gloss between the folds.

The step that matters

Bake until very light in color. Puff pastry browns quickly once the sugar begins to caramelize, and over-baking can turn the sugar bitter and dry out the layers. Pull them when they are only lightly colored, since they keep firming as they cool.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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