Navettes Marseillaises à la Fleur d'Oranger

Scoring 28 recipes

• Lift one cut open with a fingertip: it parts through the skin and stops in the fat beneath, showing a pale wall at its base. Any cut showing red or fibrous flesh has gone too deep; any that has not reached the fat has left the skin tethered, and it will tighten under heat.
• The lines run parallel at even spacing, roughly a finger's width apart, each carried the full length of the face and stopped the same margin short of the edge. Sight down them: lines that converge, wander or crowd at one end cook at different rates and read as careless on the plate.
• Each line is one clean draw of the blade held at a slant, not a sawn or doubled track, and it leaves a bevelled lip standing slightly proud rather than a vertical slot. The surface should be dry and cold, near 4C (39F), when it is cut; worked warm and slack it drags, and the blade tears where it should part.
• After cooking the cuts have opened and set, each a clear gap with firm browned walls. Lines closed back to faint scratches were cut too shallow or too straight down, and the surface has shrunk over them instead of through them.
• The piece lies flat and true when it is set down, with no cupping through the middle and no lifted, curled edge. A bowed piece means the tightening surface was never released, so it pulled the whole thing up and left the underside pale where it stood off the heat.

Where it goes wrong The blade was pushed rather than drawn, through a surface left warm and slack, so it went past the fat and into the flesh. The cuts bleed as they cook and the juices flood the surface, so it steams instead of crisping: the lines gape into wet ragged trenches, the flesh between them dries into hard ridges, and the skin stays leathery and pale where it should have blistered and set.

Egg wash & the baker’s shine 34 recipes

• Applied thin and even over every surface that will show, with no bare patches and no ridges or brush lines standing in it.
• Nothing pooled: no wash run down into the seams, collected in the corners, or welded to the tray around the base.
• It has not glued shut what needs to move: layers, scores, and cut edges are still free to open in the heat.
• Baked, the finish is even and glossy across the whole piece and deep gold rather than patchy, with no darker bands where the wash sat heavy.
• The shine is on the outside only: nothing inside the piece tastes of egg.

Where it goes wrong The wash went on heavy and ran into the scores and down to the tray, so the piece baked sealed along its seams, browned unevenly, and carries dark rubbery ridges where the egg collected.