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Dessert

Crème À LA Frangipane

A creamy almond-based filling made with flour, lemon peel, orange flowers, eggs, milk, and sugar, used for puff pastry pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Crème À LA Frangipane

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine flour, lemon peel, orange flowers, and salt.

  2. Dilute with beaten eggs and milk, then add sugar.

  3. Bring to a boil, stirring continuously for 30 minutes.

Fill and finish

  1. Once cooled, use the mixture to fill a puff pastry for a pie or tartlets.

  2. Glaze with sugar when cold.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the cream as it cooks, giving it a body that holds its shape.
Eggs
Set and thicken the cream as they cook, adding richness and structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that dilutes the eggs and cooks into a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when glazed on the cold cream, a light crust on top.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, stirring continuously for 30 minutes. Constant stirring keeps the flour and egg proteins from settling and scorching on the base of the pan. Cooking long enough lets the starch swell fully, so the cream thickens evenly and reaches a stable, spreadable consistency.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, lemon, egg, milk, 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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