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Dessert

Croquant Paste for Covering Preserves

A sweet paste made from sugar and flour, shaped and baked to cover preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Croquant Paste for Covering Preserves

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.

Make the paste

  1. Dissolve the sugar in enough cold water to make a paste with the flour.

  2. Knead and beat the mixture until smooth.

  3. Roll the paste to the size of the croquant form and about 1 inch thick.

Cut and bake

  1. Grease the form with beef suet and press it into the paste to cut the pattern.

  2. Place the cut paste on a baking tin.

  3. Brush the paste with the beaten egg white and sprinkle fine sugar on top.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

Finish

  1. Gently remove the paste from the tin while warm and lay it over the fruit to cover.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the paste, giving it body so it holds the cut pattern.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it brown lightly during baking.
Egg white
Brushed on top, it gives the surface a glossy finish as it bakes.

The step that matters

Removing the paste from the tin while warm. Once the baked paste cools it becomes hard and brittle, so lifting it gently while still warm helps prevent cracking or breaking before it is laid over the fruit.

“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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