Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Mushroom in Rock Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a tin mould shaped like a mushroom, opening in the middle with hinges.
Line the mould with buttered paper, covering the upper part.
Pour sugar into the mould instead of a sieve, following the method for rock sugar.
Create a stand or pedestal from pasteboard in any desired shape, ensuring it can hold the mushroom.
Decorate the stand as desired and place a nosegay in the mushroom when serving.
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.
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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