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Dessert

Artificial Honey

A syrup made from slippery elm bark, sugar, honey, and peppermint and rose oils.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and rose work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 94 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Artificial Honey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Soak the slippery elm bark in warm water for 4 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add the white sugar.

  4. Boil for 4 minutes.

Finish the honey

  1. While hot, stir in the bee honey.

  2. Add the oil of peppermint.

  3. Add the oil of rose.

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 + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together94 recipes

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

  2. Honey + pepperminttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Peppermint + rosetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + honeytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slippery elm bark
Its mucilage thickens the liquid and gives the honey a viscous, syrupy body.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, and its concentration gives the syrup its body.
Bee honey
Adds honey flavour and sweetness, and helps keep the finished syrup moist.

The step that matters

Stir in the bee honey while the syrup is hot. Stirring honey into hot syrup helps it dissolve evenly and blend into a uniform mixture. Added to a cooled or unevenly mixed syrup, it can separate or stay grainy.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

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