Skip to main content
Dessert

Pistachio Wafers and Pains À LA Duchesse

A pastry made of pistachio wafers, meringue domes, and glazed Pains à la Duchesse.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio Wafers and Pains À LA Duchesse

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the bases

  1. Prepare 40 pistachio wafers and 60 Pains à la Duchesse, ensuring they are light in color.

  2. Trim the edges of the domes and make openings in the center of each.

Make the meringue

  1. Whip 6 egg whites until firm, then mix in 8 ounces of sugar.

  2. Spread half of the mixture over each dome evenly and sprinkle with fine sugar.

  3. Bake in a mild oven (350°F/175°C) until lightly colored.

Glaze and finish

  1. Glaze the Pains à la Duchesse with caramel sugar and trim.

  2. Wet the edges of the boards with egg white and dip in chopped almonds or colored sugar.

  3. Once the domes are dry, whip 6 more egg whites and mix with 8 ounces of sugar to form 30 small meringues.

  4. Mask the meringues with sugar and bake on a board.

  5. Make one ordinary-sized round meringue and finish it like the others.

  6. Spread remaining egg white evenly over the dome with the small hole and strew fine sugar over it to adhere the pistachios.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets and gives the meringue its structure and crisp, light texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and, with the whipped whites, helps it dry and brown in the oven.
Fine green pistachios
Add flavour and colour to the surface of the finished pieces.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until firm. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks before sugar is folded in. Under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold air, so the meringue will spread, collapse, or bake flat and dense.

“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

Pistachio Ice CreamPistachio Ice Cream36 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes