Name: Marshmallow Water
Ingredients: 1 ounce marshmallow root; 1 pint boiling water; Juice and grated rind of 1 orange; Honey or brown sugar-candy to taste

Why it works: Orange and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,068 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Marshmallow Water

Ingredients

1 ounce marshmallow root
1 pint boiling water
Juice and grated rind of 1 orange
Honey or brown sugar-candy to taste

Directions

Prepare

Cut the marshmallow roots into thin slices and peel off the outer skin.

Infuse and flavour

Pour boiling water over the sliced roots and let it infuse for 2 hours.
Add the juice and grated rind of the orange.
Sweeten with honey or brown sugar-candy to taste.

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.

Orange + honeytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,068 recipes

Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Marshmallow root: Its mucilage thickens the water, giving it a soft, slightly viscous body.
Orange: Its juice adds acidity and its rind adds bright citrus aroma.
Honey: Adds sweetness and a mild floral flavour to balance the tartness.

“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.