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Dessert

Maids of Honour

A short pastry tart filled with jam and almond-flavored batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maids of Honour

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tins

  1. Roll out the pastry to ½ inch thickness.

  2. Line eighteen patty tins with the pastry.

  3. Put a quarter teaspoon of jam in the bottom of each tin.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the butter and half the sugar until creamy.

  2. Add one egg and the remaining sugar. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Add the second egg. Mix everything together.

  4. Stir in the flour and ground rice. Add the almond essence and baking powder. Mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Place half a teaspoon of the mixture in each patty tin.

  2. Prepare thirty-six strips of pastry. Place the strips in a cross shape on each cake.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Short pastry
Forms the crisp case that holds the filling in each tin.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a light, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and creaming it traps air for a softer texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the filling as it bakes.
Ground rice
Gives the filling a slightly crumbly, short texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the filling rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Place half a teaspoon of the mixture in each patty tin.. Too much filling overflows and bakes unevenly, while too little leaves the cakes flat. Measuring each portion evenly gives consistent size and browning.

“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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