Name: Dropped Cakes
Ingredients: almonds; prepared cochineal; spinach juice; saffron; sugar

Why it works: Almond and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dropped Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch, dry, and chop the almonds coarsely.
Pour a little prepared cochineal into your hands and roll the almonds until evenly colored.
Spread the colored almonds on a sheet of paper and place them in a gentle heat to dry.
Use spinach juice to color some almonds green and a strong infusion of saffron for yellow.
Prepare sugar by breaking it into lumps, then into grains the size of a pea.
Color the sugar in the same way, ensuring it is dry and hard to avoid excess cochineal absorption.
Use the colored almonds and sugar to decorate tarts or 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.

Almond + saffrontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together306 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Spinach + saffrontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together149 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together352 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Saffron + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together650 recipes

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