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Dessert

Fennel Honky

A sweet honey mixture flavored with fennel oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and fennel work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Fennel Honky

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the purified honey and malt sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the fennel oil and glycerin, then mix well until all ingredients are fully incorporated.

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. Honey + fenneltop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Honey + malttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Honey + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + fenneltop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together408 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Purified honey
Provides most of the sweetness and body, and holds moisture in the mixture.
Malt sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, with a milder sweetness than honey.
Fennel oil
Gives the mixture its anise-like aroma and flavour.
Glycerin
Keeps the mixture moist and smooth by retaining water and softening texture.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, malt, sugar. 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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