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Ginger Balls

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 418 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Balls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Flavour the cream filling with ginger essence.

  2. Add saffron or egg yolk for color.

  3. Shape pieces of preserved ginger.

  4. Roll the ginger pieces in the cream paste.

  5. Coat them in crystallized sugar.

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. Ginger + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together418 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saffrontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, ginger, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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