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Cayenne Pepper

A spice made by drying, grinding, and mixing ripe capsicum seeds with flour and leaven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Capsicum and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 426 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Cayenne Pepper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the seeds

  1. Dry the ripe capsicum seeds in the sun.

  2. Layer the seeds in an earthen or stone pot, mixing flour between each layer.

  3. After baking bread, place the pot in the oven to thoroughly dry the seeds.

  4. Clean the seeds from the flour and grind them into a fine powder.

Make and bake the cakes

  1. Mix one ounce of the powder with one pound of wheat flour and enough leaven for the quantity.

  2. Shape the mixture into small cakes and bake them.

  3. Cut the cakes into small pieces and bake again until hard and dry like biscuits.

  4. Powder and sift the dried cakes for storage.

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. Capsicum + wheattop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Capsicum + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,963 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe capsicum seeds
Provide the pungent, spicy flavour and heat that define the powder.
Wheat flour
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them a structure that holds together when baked.
Leaven
Acts as a raising agent so the mixture lightens and becomes less dense during baking.

The step that matters

Drying the seeds thoroughly before grinding. Seeds that retain moisture can mould or spoil during storage and will not grind into a fine, dry powder. Thorough drying in the oven removes water so the powder keeps well.

Swap the capsicum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, wheat):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Capsicumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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