Name: Sugar Grains, Colored
Ingredients: sugar grains; coloring (essence of spinach, prepared cochineal, liquid carmine, indigo, rouge, saffron)

Why it works: Spinach and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Sugar Grains, Colored

Ingredients

sugar grains
coloring (essence of spinach, prepared cochineal, liquid carmine, indigo, rouge, saffron)

Directions

Stir a little coloring into the sugar grains until each grain is stained.
Spread the colored sugar grains on a baking sheet.
Dry them in a warm place.
Use the colored sugar grains for decorating cakes.

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.

Spinach + saffrontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together149 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together650 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + spinachtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,033 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).