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Italian Confectioner

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Italian Confectioner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat sugar until it reaches a conserve stage.

  2. Add eggs and mix until a stiff paste forms.

  3. On a marble surface, sprinkle fine powdered sugar and roll the paste into balls shaped like chestnuts.

  4. Use a red-hot iron wire to touch different parts of the chestnuts to mimic roasted fruit and add a caramel flavor.

  5. Prepare wooden molds for fruit shapes and fit them with gum paste colored like the stone.

  6. Insert a small almond into each kernel and attach a wire for hanging.

  7. Blanch sweet almonds, pound them with lemon juice, and mix with powdered sugar to form a malleable paste.

  8. Shape the paste around the prepared kernels to create fruit.

  9. Divide clarified isinglass into two pans; color one with saffron and the other with carmine or cochineal.

  10. Dip one side of the fruit in yellow and the other in red, then hang to dry.

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. Almond + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, saffron):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

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

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