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The Delights of a Rose Scent Jar

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

The Delights of a Rose Scent Jar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather rose petals in the morning and let them stand in a cool place for one hour to dry.

  2. Layer the petals in a large covered dish, sprinkling coarse sea salt over each layer.

  3. Add more petals for several mornings until you have enough stock, then let it stand for ten days.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a glass fruit jar with 2 ounces of coarsely ground allspice and stick cinnamon at the bottom.

  5. After six weeks, prepare a permanent jar with 1 ounce each of ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and mace, 1 ounce of bruised orris root, 2 ounces of lavender flowers, and any other sweet-scented dried flowers or herbs.

  6. Mix and layer this in the jar with the rose stock, adding a few drops of oil of rose geranium or violet, and pour over ¼ pint of good cologne.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rose, allspice, cinnamon, clove, lavender):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, allspice, cinnamon, clove, lavender. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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