Name: Italian Confectioner
Ingredients: confectionery paste; almond paste (colored pale pink); syrup; gum paste (for swans); rock sugar; biscuits; caramel; red almond paste

Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Italian Confectioner

Ingredients

Directions

Roll out confectionery paste to ¼ inch thick, the size of your dish.
Line a mold with almond paste and create a pedestal with baked almond paste.
Ensure everything is dry and well joined, then place it in the stove.
Boil syrup to fill the hollow of the mold, representing water.
Model swans in gum paste and place them in the syrup.
Bake in the stove for three hours, then drain the syrup through a small hole.
Build a rock on the pedestal using rock sugar, biscuits, and other sugar items, cementing with caramel.
Finish the piece with red almond paste for molding and spin sugar for ornaments.

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.

Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together388 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,874 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Syrup + biscuittop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together139 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).