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Dessert

Candied Violets

Candied violets are sweetened violet flowers coated in sugar syrup and served as a confection.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Candied Violets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cups

  1. Lightly rub 2 tablespoons of olive oil in each cup.

  2. Blend in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Arrange the violets

  1. Place 12 violets in each cup, twining them with their stems, leaving a small nest in the center.

  2. Fill each nest with 6 blanched almonds.

Make the syrup and set

  1. Boil 1 cup of sugar until it reaches the crackling point.

  2. Dip 3 spoonfuls of syrup into each cup, covering the violets.

  3. Once cold, turn out the candies and serve in a bon bon dish.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Olive + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Olive + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Boils to a syrup that hardens as it cools, forming the crisp candy coating over the violets.
Violets
Provide the delicate floral flavor and appearance of the finished candy.
Blanched almonds
Fill the centre nest, adding a mild nutty bite beneath the sugar coating.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to the crackling point. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set hard when cooled. Too little cooking leaves it sticky and soft, while overcooking turns it brittle or caramelised, so the candy may not set as intended.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vanilla, sugar. 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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