Skip to main content
Dessert

Russian Honey Sticks

A sweet dough made with flour, honey, orange rind, and sugar, baked into sticks and sprinkled with brown sugar and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,068 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Russian Honey Sticks

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, sugar, and orange rind.

  2. Mix in the honey to form a stiff paste.

  3. Knead the dough well and roll it out to 1 inch thick.

  4. Let the dough stand in a warm place for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Place on baking sheets, sprinkle with brown sugar and chopped nuts.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly browned.

  3. Cut into narrow strips and serve 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. Orange + honeytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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. Honey + nutstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together.
Honey
Adds moisture and sweetness, and helps the dough brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning during baking.
Orange rind
Adds aroma and a bright citrus flavour to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough stand in a warm place for 1 hour. Resting lets the flour fully absorb the honey and relaxes the gluten, so the stiff dough becomes easier to roll and cut cleanly into strips.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, orange, honey):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, orange, honey. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes