Name: Italian Confectioner
Ingredients: very fine powdered loaf sugar; liqueur (noyau); saffron; strong decoction of coffee; cochineal

Why it works: Sugar and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Italian Confectioner

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Fill a 45-inch deep box with very fine powdered loaf sugar and smooth it with a ruler.
Print impressions into the sugar using your models.
Fill the impressions with the same composition as for liqueur rings.
Place the box in a 400°F (200°C) oven for twelve hours.
The next day, remove the ornaments and brush off excess sugar.
Paint the ornaments to your taste and incorporate them into candy as usual.

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 + coffeetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Saffron + coffeetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together650 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).