Name: Sweetmeat Biscuits
Ingredients: Naples biscuits; egg whites; sugar; orange flower water; sweetmeats (lemon and orange peel, angelica)

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweetmeat Biscuits

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.

Cut Naples biscuits into 1.5-inch squares and 1-inch thick pieces.
Place them on a wire rack and crisp them in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Make icing by mixing egg whites, sugar, and orange flower water.
Dip one side of each biscuit in the icing.
Chop sweetmeats into small pieces and sprinkle over the iced side of the biscuits.
Return the biscuits to the oven to harden the icing.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together189 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together697 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Orangethe original
Limefits about as well
Raisinfits about as well

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