Hold the milk...pass the wine
A recipe for a savory cookie that's not for kids, and that's just fine
Bonjour! Bonjour!
I’m not sure when it began, this fascination with savory things that are normally sweet, but I know where it began — Paris. Of course. My first taste was probably a slender savory loaf cake — a cake salé — from Picard, the frozen food stores that every French person shops but rarely admits to at dinner parties.
Savory cakes are a commonplace here. They turn up at brunch — yes, the French “do brunch” — get packed for picnics and are most often sliced into fingers and served with drinks at the apéro or cocktail hour. (If the idea intrigues you the way it did me, try making the Cheesy, Herby Quick Bread.) The savory cake’s next of kin is the salty cookie, which mostly tilts crackerward. Think one hundred different kinds of Cheez-its or just as many herb crackers. Here in Paris, just about every supermarket carries apéro cookies by Michel et Augustin, and I usually have at least one bag. Since I’ve always got olives in the fridge and salted nuts in the pantry, if there’s ever an apéro emergency, I’m ready.
Once I caught onto the idea of savory cookies, I couldn’t stop playing around with it, and when Joshua and I opened Beurre & Sel, our long-gone cookie shop, I made a whole line of what we called “cocktail cookies.” There were cheese cookies, of course, Rosemary-Parm Sablés were the bestsellers, and cookies with other herbs or nuts, and one of my favorites, the chocolate cookie with smoked paprika and smoked almonds – a great combo, particularly with cognac. (You can find all of those recipes in Dorie’s Cookies.)
The more I played with cookies on the edge of sweet and savory, the more ideas I had. (That chapter in Cookies is a chubby one!) But it wasn’t until years later that I discovered the traditional savory cookies of Europe, among them Italy’s taralli, crunchy, round, bready cookies, and biscotti meant to be dipped in vin santo; canistrelli from Corsica (here’s a recipe from
); and the delicious wine and olive oil cookies from the south of France known as zézettes.
Cookies with tittery names
I’m drawing a blank, so help me out if you can — do you know the names of any pastries that might provoke a little embarrassed laugh if you said them to a prissy relative or a giggle if you said them to a child? Names that might be considered a little naughty or a little impolite? I can think of two French treats like that. The first is pets des nonnes — nuns’ farts. Yep. When I published a recipe for Nun’s Beignets, the English translation, I couldn’t bring myself to write the word “fart” — but my editor insisted. Of course she was right — the French don’t give it a second thought.
But then, when it came to zézettes, which I called “Olive Oil and Wine Cookies,” I just couldn’t figure out how to politely explain the name. It’s slang, and it refers to a little boy’s zizi, as it’s sometimes called in France — you get the idea. You probably didn’t expect to be reading about private parts and rude sounds and I didn’t expect to be writing about them, but in the interest of cultural clarity, there they are.
With that kind of intro, I think it’s important that I give you the headline: The cookies are so good.
The go-with-wine cookie that includes the wine
Zézettes come from the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France, which is one of the parts of France where butter doesn’t reign supreme — this is olive-oil country. It’s also wine country, famous for Muscat-Rivesaltes, a wildly aromatic, fortified sweet wine that could be dessert on its own, but could only be better with a zézette or in a zézette, since the cookie needs (at least as I make it) as much wine as it does olive oil — it’s a true child of the region.
I usually describe the flavor of these cookies as mysterious, which I know isn’t much help — sorry — but the taste isn’t obvious: It’s a little sweet at first (the sugar), and then it’s got a little tang (the wine) and then it’s just its own kind of delightful. And the texture’s not so easy to pin down either: Freshly made, they’re crunchy at the tips and cakey in the center. But a day or so later, they dry and resemble a terrific tea biscuit — or a dunking cookie. Of course I can’t resist having a cookie as soon as the batch has cooled, but I like them more as they age — I think that’s when they really come into their own.
Have fun with these. Play around with them (as always, I’ve got ideas to get you started; scroll down). Nibble them. Dunk them. Share them.
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FRUITY OLIVE OIL AND WHITE WINE COOKIES (AKA ZÉZETTES)
Adapted from Baking Chez Moi
GOOD TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START
The oil: Respecting the cookie’s birthplace, the oil you use should be made from olives, but it needn’t be extra-virgin oil. Your best choice is a fruity choice — your best-best is an oil you like. Of course the oil will change when it’s mixed with other ingredients and when it’s subjected to sustained heat. But starting out with something you like ups the odds that you’ll end up with something you love.
The wine: A white wine or even a rosé makes good cookies, but if you were making these in the south of France, you might chose a Muscat-Rivesaltes from the region. It’s a fortified sweet wine, a dessert wine (although I have friends who like to serve it chilled as an aperitif) that is so deliciously fragrant I sometimes want to dab it on like perfume.
The dredge: The cookies are meant to be dredged in sugar just before they go into the oven. If you want to tilt the cookie just a smidge more savory, add a little salt to the mix.
The yield: This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies, but because they’re good (I think better) when they’ve had time to dry, and because they’re made for dunking, they last a long time. The shaped cookies can also be frozen before baking. All this to say that you’ll be happy to have a full batch.
Makes about 36 cookies
INGREDIENTS
2 3/4 cups (374 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) olive oil, extra-virgin or not, preferably fruity (see above)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (120 ml) white wine (see above)
Sugar, for dredging (see above)
DIRECTIONS
Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. Pour in the olive oil, switch to a flexible spatula and stir to incorporate—you don’t have to be thorough now. Pour the vanilla extract into the wine, then pour the wine mixture into the bowl and mix until you have an easy-to-work-with dough. It will be smooth on the outside, but peek inside, and you’ll see that it looks like a sponge; when you pinch and pull it, you’ll be surprised at how stretchy it is.
Divide the dough into pieces about the size of a large cherry or small walnut and roll each one into a ball. Next, roll each ball under your palm to shape it into a short sausage. When you’ve got the sausage shape, press on the ends with your thumb and pinkie (don’t press the center), and roll up and back a few times to form a cookie about 4 inches long that is just a little plump in the center and tapered at the ends. Dredge each cookie in sugar and arrange the cookies on the baking sheets.
(The cookies can be shaped, but not rolled in sugar, frozen on the lined baking sheets and then, when firm, packed airtight and kept in the freezer for up to 2 months. There’s no need to defrost before baking.)
Bake the cookies for 20 to 22 minutes, rotating the baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back after 10 minutes, until the cookies have brown tips and bottoms and golden bellies. (If baking from frozen, dredge the cookies in sugar and bake a minute or two longer.) Cool the cookies on the baking sheets. Enjoy as soon as they’ve cooled or wait a day before serving (my druthers).
STORING: You can keep these in a container for at least a week, more if you plan to dunk them.
PLAYING AROUND: In the Languedoc-Roussillon, these cookies are often flavored with orange-flower water (instead of vanilla, which was my idea) or enriched with anise seeds. My favorite addition is grated orange (or tangerine or clementine) zest (lemon would work as well). To get the most out of the zest, first put the sugar in the mixing bowl, sprinkle over the zest and use your fingers to rub the sugar and zest together until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and continue with the recipe.
Not a cookie, but I happened to open your email while watching a video about "spotted dick" on the Tasting History with Max Miller youtube channel. Also, I have made your cheesy herby bread, and it was a huge hit on the office snack counter.
What a fascinating cookie with an interesting history. I must try these soon. Thank you! And, as always, your directions are so clear and helpful!❤️