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Dessert

Pate a Gimblettes

A small pastry made from egg yolk, butter, flour, and optional citrus peel, baked until dry and crusty.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pate a Gimblettes

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 dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, butter, flour, salt, and a little milk. Mix with your hands until a paste forms.

  2. Add lemon peel or orange flower to the paste and mix well.

Shape the rings

  1. Cut the paste into small pieces and roll them into finger-sized rings.

  2. Seal the rings with a little beaten egg yolk.

  3. Grease a baking sheet with butter and place the rings on it, ensuring they are all the same size.

Bake

  1. Brush the rings twice with beaten egg yolk.

  2. Bake in a moderately hot oven at 350°F (175°C) until dry and crusty.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and colour, and help bind the paste together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour to the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste and rings together.

The step that matters

Brushing with beaten egg yolk. Egg yolk gives the rings a glossy, golden browning when baked. Brushing evenly, and twice as directed, helps the surface brown uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, milk. 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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