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Syrup of Clove Gilliflowers

A syrup made by macerating clove gillyflowers in water, then sweetening with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Syrup of Clove Gilliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the white heads from the clove gillyflowers.

  2. Pour 6 pints of water over the flowers and cover them tightly.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight to macerate.

Make the syrup

  1. The next morning, strain the liquid without pressing the flowers.

  2. In a gentle heat, dissolve 3 pounds of powdered sugar in the strained liquid, stirring continuously. Do not allow the mixture to boil or get very hot.

  3. Once the sugar is completely melted, cover the syrup and bottle it once it cools.

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. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Clove gillyflowers
Supply the clove-like aroma and flavour that defines the syrup.
Fine powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and dissolves easily into the cool-to-warm liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the dissolving gentle and do not boil. Heating the sugar syrup to a boil or high heat can drive off the delicate aromatic compounds of the flowers and dull their fresh flavour. Gentle heat lets the sugar dissolve while the aroma stays intact.

“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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