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Dessert

Lady Fingers

Lady Fingers are light, sponge-like cookies made with eggs, sugar, flour, rose water, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lady Fingers

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease tin plates with white wax.

Make the batter

  1. Whip the egg whites to a firm peak.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks with the powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. Mix the whipped egg whites with the yolk mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the sifted flour and rose or orange-flower water until incorporated.

Shape and bake

  1. Fill a funnel with the batter and pipe it onto the plates in finger-sized shapes.

  2. Sprinkle white sugar over each finger.

  3. Let them sit until the sugar melts and they shine.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until they are a light color.

Finish

  1. Once cool, remove from the tins and pair them together by the backs.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + rosetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the batter its airy structure, and the yolks add richness and body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and blends with the yolks to form a smooth base.
Sifted flour
Provides the set structure that holds the piped fingers' shape during baking.
Rose or orange-flower water
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and flavouring. Overmixing or deflating the whipped egg whites knocks out the air that gives ladyfingers their light, spongy texture. Fold gently until just incorporated.

“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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