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Dessert

Candied Pansies, Mint Leaves, Etc

A confection of pansies and mint leaves coated in gum arabic, dried, then dipped in sugar syrup and dredged in granulated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Candied Pansies, Mint Leaves, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gum arabic coating

  1. Combine gum arabic and cold water in a double boiler, stirring while it melts.

Coat and dry the flowers

  1. Brush the solution over leaves, petals, or blossoms, covering both sides.

  2. Let the coated items dry on an oilcloth-covered table.

Make the syrup and sugar the flowers

  1. Boil ½ cup water and 1 cup sugar until it reaches 234°F (112°C).

  2. Dip the prepared items into the syrup.

  3. Dredge with granulated sugar on both sides.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gum arabic
Dries into a thin, sticky film that holds the sugar to the petals.
Sugar
Boiled into syrup, it forms a sweet, glossy coating that dries onto the petals.
Granulated sugar
Dredged over the wet syrup, it gives the flowers a frosted, sparkling finish.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to 234°F (112°C). The sugar concentration sets the coating. Too little boiling leaves a runny syrup that slides off the petals, while too much makes a hard, brittle shell.

“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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