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Dessert

Artificial Honey

A sweet syrup made by dissolving sugar in water, adding cream of tartar, boiling, and flavoring with peppermint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Artificial Honey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water over low heat and skim off any impurities.

  2. Dissolve the cream of tartar in a little warm water and stir it into the sugar mixture.

  3. Heat the honey to a boiling point and add it to the mixture.

  4. Add the peppermint essence and stir for a few minutes.

  5. Let the mixture cool until it is ready for use.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Havana sugar
Forms the bulk of the syrup and provides all of the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping to keep sugar from recrystallizing into grains.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar in water over low heat and skim off any impurities.. Sugar must dissolve completely before the mixture boils, since undissolved crystals can seed grainy recrystallization later. Skimming removes impurities that could cloud the syrup or spoil its texture.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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