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Dessert

Lemon Rings

A baked pastry made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, almonds, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Rings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl and add a pinch of salt.

  2. Rub in the butter.

  3. Beat one whole egg and one yolk with the sugar until creamy.

  4. Mix the egg mixture with the flour.

  5. Add the ground almonds, grated lemon rind, and half of the strained lemon juice.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Use paste-cutters to stamp out rings of your desired size.

  3. Place the rings on a greased baking sheet.

  4. Brush the rings with beaten egg yolk.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Rubbed into the flour to give the dough a short, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, and the yolk gives the rings a glossy, browned finish.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough so the rings hold their shape when baked.
Castor sugar
Beaten with the eggs to a creamy base and adds sweetness to the dough.
Ground almonds
Add nutty flavour and a tender, slightly crumbly texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough to an even thickness. Dough rolled to uneven thickness bakes unevenly, so thin spots over-brown or dry out while thick spots stay pale and soft. Rolling to about ¼ inch gives rings that bake at the same rate.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, almond, flour. 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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