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Dessert

London Brandy Snap

A sweet biscuit made with flour, butter, sugar, syrup, and lemon juice, baked until brown and rolled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

London Brandy Snap

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter, sugar, and syrup in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

Bake and shape

  1. Spread a tablespoon of the mixture thinly over the center of a sandwich tin.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 6 to 7 minutes or until brown.

  3. Carefully insert a knife under the baked mixture to remove it from the tin and roll it up.

Store

  1. Store in airtight tins.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin biscuit together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, crisp texture and rich flavor.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it spread and brown in the oven.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds moisture and sweetness, and helps the snaps turn golden and crisp.

The step that matters

Baking time and removal from the tin. The snaps are thin and brown quickly, so they must be watched closely and lifted while still warm and pliable, before they set hard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, syrup. 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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