Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sugar Bee-hive
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the decorations
Prepare the gum paste bees: mold twenty or thirty bees in gum paste, shape them, make a hole with a pin on each side of the mouth, let them dry, and make some wings extend as if flying.
Prepare the borders and leaves: take as many borders out of your gum paste moulds as will go around the bottom, take out leaves for the top, run a husk round the sides to represent the matting of the hive, lay borders and leaves on a marble slab, cover with a cloth to keep them moist.
Provide a large round crocanth mould shaped like a bee-hive.
Make the spun sugar
Boil the sugar: in a small brass pan, boil a small quantity of clarified sugar at a clear fire; add a teaspoonful of lemon juice to a pint of clarified sugar; if the sugar is likely to boil over, drop one drop of sweet oil from your finger into the sugar to stop it.
Spin the sugar: spin the hot sugar close to the inside of the mould, ensuring it is regularly spun, very strong, threads fine, and no blotches.
Let the spun sugar cool: let it stand until quite cold.
Turn out the spun sugar: turn it out of the mould onto a large dish.
Assemble
Ornament the spun sugar bee-hive: place the gum paste bees, borders, and leaves onto the spun sugar, and ornament as described.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Olive Oil | 1 tbsp (14g) | 119 |
| Sugar | 1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated | 49 |
| Lemon | juice of 1 lemon (48ml) | 12 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Clarified sugar
- Forms the hot sugar threads that set into the hive's fine, crisp spun structure.
- Lemon juice
- Acidity helps keep the boiled sugar from crystallising, keeping the threads smooth.
- Sweet oil
- Used in a single drop to help stop the sugar from boiling over.
The step that matters
Spin the sugar. Sugar must be hot and spun in fine, even threads while still fluid. If it cools too much or is spun unevenly, the threads become thick, blotchy and weak.
“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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