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Dessert

Galettes, Plain

A sweet bread dough with sugar, currants, raisins, spices, fat, and egg, baked into small flat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Galettes, Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Blend all ingredients together.

  2. Let the dough rise after mixing.

  3. Form the dough into balls the size of an orange.

  4. Flatten the balls slightly and snip the edges with scissors.

  5. Place them on a baking sheet with half an inch space between each.

  6. Prove over hot water for 10 minutes, covered with a thin cloth.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 12 to 15 minutes.

  2. Glaze them and return to the oven for 1 minute.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Light bread dough
Provides the soft, airy crumb structure that the galettes rise into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Fat (such as dripping)
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Egg
Enriches the dough and helps bind it and give colour to the crust.

The step that matters

Proving over hot water. The dough must rise under gentle, covered warmth before baking. Yeast activity drives this rise, so the cloth keeps the surface from drying and forming a skin, which would restrict the galettes' spring in the oven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, raisin, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, egg. 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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