Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Caraway Comfits

Caraway seeds coated in clarified sugar syrup to make sweet comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scotch Caraway Comfits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the caraway seeds to remove dust.

  2. Place the seeds in a comfit-pan and warm them by rubbing with your hand.

Coat the seeds

  1. Pour about ⅛ cup of syrup over the seeds to start.

  2. Rub and shake the seeds in the pan to coat them evenly with sugar until dry.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Caraway + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Caraway + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Caraway seeds
Form the core of each comfit and supply the flavour.
Clarified loaf sugar
Forms a hard, sweet, crisp shell around each seed as the syrup dries.

The step that matters

Adding the syrup and drying it. Syrup must be added in small amounts and dried between additions. Sugar crystallises in thin layers as water evaporates; too much syrup at once makes the seeds clump together and stay wet.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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.

You might also like

Oranges in SyrupOranges in Syrup9 recipesSyrup SauceSyrup Sauce6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes