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 ↓
Petits Fours
Ingredients
Directions
Roll out the sugar into a flat piece about 2 feet long.
Bring the two ends together, placing the white part next to the red.
Twist the ends together to mix the colors, forming a 6-inch long mass with four white and four red sections.
Begin wrapping the sugar around a wooden stick, starting from the thicker end.
Place your foot on the middle of the stove for stability, using your knee to hold the sugar for better control.
As the sugar thickens, you can hold the remaining sugar in your hand.
Have someone else detach the sugar from the sticks to form crowns.
If the sugar sticks to the sticks, dust them with a little flour or oil them.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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