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Dessert

Artificial Honey

A sweet syrup made by mixing sugar, honey, water, and flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Mix together the white sugar, clear bees' honey, hot water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Flavor with 2-3 drops of rose oil.

  4. Sprinkle in the broken honeycomb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Honey + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and the body of the syrup.
Clear bees' honey
Adds sweetness and flavour, and its invert sugars help keep the syrup from crystallising.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that partly breaks down sucrose, helping the syrup stay smooth and less grainy.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool. Sugar syrup stirred while hot can recrystallise as it cools, leaving a grainy texture. Letting it cool undisturbed helps keep the syrup smooth and clear.

“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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