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Dessert

Italian Confectioner

A sugar confection made with rose or orange flower water, spirits, molded into small shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and spirit work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Italian Confectioner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Sift the sugar through a fine sieve into an earthen pan.

  2. Moisten the sugar with a little rose water or orange flower water until it forms a stiff paste.

  3. Add a small quantity of spirits or liqueur to the paste until it has the consistency of thin icing.

Cook and mold

  1. Place the mixture in a copper pan over heat and stir continuously.

  2. When the mixture begins to rise and the sugar shines on the surface, pour it into a funnel and fill your small molds.

Dry

  1. Allow the molds to cool, then place them in a warm oven to dry for a few hours.

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. Rose + spirittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the mixture and, once heated, sets into a hard, glossy shell.
Rose water or orange flower water
Adds aroma and moisture so the sugar can be worked into a stiff paste.
Spirits or liqueur
Thins the paste to the consistency of icing and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture over heat as it rises. Sugar syrup can overheat and turn dark or grainy if it is left unattended. Stirring keeps heat even, and the glossy surface shows the sugar is ready to pour before it hardens.

“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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