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Clove, Ginger, or Peppermint Candy

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Clove, Ginger, or Peppermint Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil loaf sugar until it reaches the crack stage.

  2. For clove, color the mixture with cochineal; for ginger, use saffron; keep peppermint white except for stripes.

  3. Divide the sugar into pieces for coloring, adding the desired tint to each.

  4. Keep the colored pieces warm while pulling the remaining sugar.

  5. Lay the colored pieces over the surface in narrow stripes and double the roll together.

  6. Pull into long sticks, twist, and roll them to make them round, or cut into small pieces with scissors.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + saffrontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Saffron + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together418 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 saffron

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

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

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