Name: Artificial Strawberries
Ingredients: almond paste; pounded sugar; syrup of raspberries or other fruit; carmine dissolved in strong gum; whisk (for stalks)

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 ↓

Artificial Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Make almond paste and roll it into the size of a strawberry.
Shape the paste in your hands to resemble a strawberry and insert a piece of whisk in the stalk-end.
Place the prepared strawberries in a sieve filled with pounded sugar to stand upright.
Sift coarse sugar to remove dust and dip the strawberries into the fruit syrup, then into the sugar to form seeds.
Use a fine hair pencil to apply dissolved carmine for shine and color.
Remove the whisk pieces after drying and leave the hole white.
Let them dry in a warm place for a few hours and serve on plates with strawberry leaves.

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.

Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Almond + syruptop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together746 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).