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On Modelling Flowers in Fine Gum Paste

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

On Modelling Flowers in Fine Gum Paste

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a bottle half full with garlic and top it with spirits of wine.

  2. Stop the bottle lightly with paper and place it in warm water.

  3. Boil until reduced by one-third, then seal the bottle for use.

  4. Mix a small glass of the liquor with alabaster powder to form a paste.

  5. Add liquor as needed and finish hardening with starch.

  6. For colors, divide the paste into white, red, blue, and yellow, and create compounds for modeling flowers.

  7. Use a wooden calyx mold for the flower base and attach the heart with a wire.

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. Garlic + saffrontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Garlic + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Wine + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spirit + saffrontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spirit, wine, saffron):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, wine, saffron. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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