Why it works: Capsicum and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,963 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Cayenne Pepper
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pepper
Grind the Capsicum berries and coarse sea salt together.
Color the mixture with Vermillion (avoid using red lead).
Make the cakes
Bury the Capsicum in flour and bake until dry enough to powder.
Using pincers, cut the dried Capsicum into small pieces.
For each ounce of Capsicum, add 1 pound of flour.
Add enough water and yeast to form small cakes.
Bake the cakes, then slice and bake them again.
Finish
Powder the biscuits and sift them.
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.
-
Capsicum + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,963 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Capsicum berries
- Provide the primary pepper heat and red flavour that define the powder.
- Flour
- Absorbs moisture and bulks out the pepper so it can be baked dry and powdered.
- Yeast
- Helps the dough rise and become porous, giving the baked cakes a lighter texture.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the mixture and helps draw out moisture from the pepper during grinding.
The step that matters
Bake until dry enough to powder. If the pepper and flour are not baked fully dry, the mixture will stay damp and will not grind into a fine powder. Moisture left in the mixture can also let it spoil or clump during storage.
“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.
More cayenne pepper recipes
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.