Why it works: Lemon and bergamot work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 108 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Bergamot Wafers
Ingredients
Directions
Squeeze the lemons into a small pan.
Mix in enough powdered sugar to achieve the same thickness as your lemon wafers.
Add a few drops of essence of bergamot and mix well with the egg white.
Beat the mixture until it is very white; if it becomes too thick, add the juice of one more lemon.
Be careful not to add too much bergamot essence to avoid bitterness.
Prepare the wafers in the same manner as your lemon wafers.
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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Lemon + bergamottop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together108 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + bergamottop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together31 recipes
Lemon and sugar 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 bergamot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, egg):
- Orangefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Limefits better
- Bergamotthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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