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Dessert

Honey Sweetmeats

A sweet confection made from butter, flour, water, and white honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Honey Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Gradually mix in the flour to create a smooth batter with the water.

  3. Add the white honey and stir the mixture over the heat until the butter rises to the top.

  4. Remove from heat and stir for a few more minutes, pressing the mixture against the sides of the pan.

Serve

  1. Pile the sweetmeats in a pyramid on a hot dish and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Flour + honeytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sweetmeats a tender, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Provides structure, thickening the batter so the mixture holds its shape when piled.
White honey
Supplies sweetness and moisture, and helps bind the mixture together as it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring in the honey over the heat. Honey is rich in sugar, which can scorch on direct heat if left unattended. Stirring constantly keeps the mixture even, lets the butter separate and rise, and helps the sugar cook evenly without burning.

“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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