Name: Harlequin Pistachios
Ingredients: 1 cup pounded sugar; rose-water; pistachios; white nonpareils; optional: moistened carmine

Why it works: Rose and pistachio work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Harlequin Pistachios

Ingredients

Directions

Moisten the pounded sugar with rose-water.
Wrap a pistachio in the sugar paste and shape it in your hand.
Roll the shaped pistachio in white nonpareils to coat it.
Repeat with all pistachios.
Optionally, add moistened carmine to the paste for color.

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.

Rose + pistachiotop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,584 recipes

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