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Dessert

Maids of Honour

A small puff pastry tart filled with a buttery, sugared biscuit crumb mixture flavored with almond liqueur, candied angelica, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Maids of Honour

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line small patty tins with puff pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg alternately with the crushed biscuit crumbs.

  3. Mix in the noyeau and a few candied cherries.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the pastry-lined tins with the mixture.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes.

  3. Decorate with candied angelica and cherries before serving.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Almond + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the filling richness and a tender, fine texture.
Castor sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help trap air for a light filling.
Egg
Binds the filling and adds moisture and structure as it sets in the oven.
Biscuit crumbs
Add body and a dry, slightly sandy texture that soaks up the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Add the egg alternately with the crumbs. Adding the egg in portions while mixing keeps the creamed butter and sugar from separating. A smooth, evenly combined filling then bakes to a uniform set.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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