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Nectae Syrup

A pink syrup made by mixing vanilla syrup with pineapple and lemon, coloured with carmine or cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Nectae Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thoroughly mix together the vanilla syrup, pineapple, and lemon.

  2. Add a few drops of carmine or cochineal to colour the syrup pink.

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. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Syrup + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla syrup
Provides the sweet base and the vanilla flavour of the syrup.
Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and tropical flavour to the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, syrup, pineapple):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, syrup, pineapple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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