Name: Curious Small Cakes of Incense for Perfuming Apartments
Ingredients: equal quantities of lignum Rhodium powder; anise powder; dried Seville orange peel powder; gum benzoin powder; gum dragon or tragacanth; rose water; civet

Why it works: Anise and orange work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Curious Small Cakes of Incense for Perfuming Apartments

Ingredients

Directions

Mix equal quantities of lignum Rhodium and anise powders with dried Seville orange peel and gum benzoin in a marble mortar.
Add dissolved gum dragon or tragacanth in rose water and a little civet to the mixture.
Beat the mixture well and form it into small cakes.
Place the cakes on paper to dry.
Burn one cake in a large room to diffuse a pleasant aroma.

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.

Anise + orangetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together44 recipes

Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).
Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together876 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Anise + rosetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together13 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).