Skip to main content
Dessert

Fairy Fancies

Fairy Fancies are small pastry rings filled with various preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apricot and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fairy Fancies

a dozen small sheets
Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the short crust pastry thinly and evenly.

  2. Cut out a dozen small sheets using a larger tin cutter.

  3. Use two round cutters to form rings, one about 1 inch in diameter and the other half that size.

  4. Place the rings on the pastry sheets as shown in the engraving.

  5. Moisten each ring with egg white using a brush.

  6. Place the moistened rings on the pastry.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) until crisp and pale.

  2. Fill each section of the pastry with a different preserve 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. Apricot + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Peach + raspberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  4. Strawberry + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Strawberry + peachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Short crust pastry
Forms the crisp, pale case that holds the preserves.
Egg white
Brushed on to glue the rings to the pastry sheets before baking.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour to one filled section.
Apple jelly
Adds sweetness and a clear, glossy fruit filling.

The step that matters

Bake in a gentle oven. Low, steady heat dries and crisps the pastry without browning it too fast. A hot oven can colour the edges before the centre sets, leaving the pastry hard or unevenly baked.

“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

Mixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRaspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesStrawberry Ice CreamStrawberry Ice Cream122 recipes