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Dessert

Cream Slippers

A puff pastry pastry filled with jam and whipped cream, topped with pistachios and red sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cream Slippers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to ¼ inch thick and cut into strips about 1 inch wide.

  2. Wet one side of each strip and carefully fold it around a greased cornet or slipper mold, ensuring the edges join well.

  3. Brush the folded pastry with beaten egg.

Bake and cool

  1. Place the slippers on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the molds and let the pastry cool.

Fill and garnish

  1. Half fill each slipper with jam, then fill with whipped and sweetened cream.

  2. Garnish with red sugar and chopped, blanched pistachio nuts.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Bakes into flaky, layered shells that hold the filling.
Thick cream
Whipped, it forms the light, rich filling of each slipper.
Egg
Beaten egg brushed on the pastry promotes browning and a glossy finish.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour beneath the cream filling.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it whip to a stable, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Folding and sealing the pastry around the mold. If the edges do not join well, the strips can separate or open in the oven, and the shell loses its shape. Wetting one side helps the layers bond so the slipper holds its form while baking.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, pistachio, nuts, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, pistachio, nuts, 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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