Name: Marigold Wine
Ingredients: 3.5 pounds lump sugar; 1 gallon water; 1 gallon marigold flowers; brandy (for bottling)

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marigold Wine

Ingredients

3.5 pounds lump sugar
1 gallon water
1 gallon marigold flowers
brandy (for bottling)

Directions

Boil the sugar in water until dissolved.
Add the marigold flowers, picked from the stalks.
If gathering flowers in small amounts, dry them in the shade until you have enough.
Pour the sugar water over the flowers in a barrel.
Add a little brandy to the bottles when bottling off.

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.

Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar: Dissolved in water to make the sweet base that feeds fermentation and gives the wine its sweetness.
Marigold flowers: Provide the flavour and colour of the wine.
Brandy: Added at bottling to fortify the wine and help preserve it.

“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.