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Dessert

Ladies' Fingers

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ladies' Fingers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until creamy. Add the egg and milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and vanilla.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into strips.

  2. Roll the strips in sugar.

  3. Place the strips on a baking sheet.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add fat and tenderness to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the strips together as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so baking soda can react and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas for lift.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour slowly and stirring only until smooth keeps the dough from becoming tough. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes baked cookies dense and chewy rather than tender.

“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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