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Dessert

Sugar of Roses in Figures

A candied sugar confection flavored with dried rose buds, rose water, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sugar of Roses in Figures

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roses

  1. Chip off the white part of the rose buds and dry them in the sun.

  2. Pound the dried rose buds very fine.

Make the candy

  1. Wet the loaf sugar in rose water and boil it to candy height.

  2. Add the powdered roses and lemon juice to the sugar mixture.

  3. Mix well, then spread it on a pie plate and cut into lozenges or desired shapes.

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. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Dried rose-buds
Provides the main floral aroma and flavour once pounded into a fine powder.
Loaf sugar
Forms the candy base, which sets firm as the boiled syrup cools.
Rose water
Adds a delicate rose aroma to the sugar as it is boiled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the floral flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to candy height. The syrup must reach the right concentration. If it is under-boiled, the candy stays soft and sticky; if over-boiled, it turns hard, brittle, or burnt. Watching the sugar closely at this stage determines the final texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, 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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