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Sunflower and Glycerine Soap

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Sunflower and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 194 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Sunflower and Glycerine Soap

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the sunflower oil and tallow together in a steam-jacketed pan.

  2. Add the coconut oil and caustic soda, stirring until combined.

  3. Mix in the sugar and water, then cover the pan and heat gently for one hour.

  4. After heating, add the Indian geranium alcohol and African geranium oil.

  5. Sift in the brown coloring, powdered Siam benzoin, liquid storax, balsam, and tonka bean tincture.

  6. Stir until the mixture is clear and granular, then add any available soap cuttings.

  7. Cover the pan again and let it settle until clarification is complete.

  8. Pour the soap into small iron frames and allow it to cool and harden.

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. Sunflower + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  2. Sunflower + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sunflower, sugar, geranium, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sunflower, sugar, geranium, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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