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Dessert

Puff-paste Rings, or Wreaths

A puff-paste ring pastry decorated with sugar, egg white, and 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-paste and roll it out to ⅙ inch thick.

  2. Stamp out twenty circular pieces, each about 1¾ inches in diameter.

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

Bake and decorate

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

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

  3. Once baked, decorate with whipped egg white and sugar, then sprinkle with coarse sugar.

  4. Let them dry, then finish decorating by inserting strips of currant or apple jelly.

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-paste
Its laminated layers of dough and fat puff into flaky, airy structure as it bakes.
Whipped egg white
Its proteins form a light foam that dries into a crisp, glossy topping.
Fine sugar
Sugar on the rings caramelizes in the oven, adding sweetness and light browning.
Currant or apple jelly
Its sugar and pectin give a sweet, glossy finish to the decorative strips.

The step that matters

Bake until very light in color. Puff pastry needs enough heat to set its layers and steam apart, but over-browning turns the sugared rings bitter. Pulling them at a very light color keeps them tender and sweet.

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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