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Dessert

Kringles

A pastry made from egg yolks, egg whites, butter, flour, and sugar, formed into biscuits and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kringles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs well.

  2. Mix in the warmed butter.

  3. Knead in the flour and sugar to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the paste into thick biscuits.

  2. Prick the biscuits and bake on tin plates.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the dough together.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the dough hold its shape when beaten.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the biscuits a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough and biscuits together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Kneading in the flour and sugar. Kneading develops gluten in flour, so work the dough only until it forms a paste. Overworking makes the biscuits tough and dense.

“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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