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Dessert

Rose Drops

A sweet confection made from refined sugar, dried rose petals, and lemon juice, formed into stiff paste and dried into lozenges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Rose Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the sugar very fine and pass it through a lawn sieve.

  2. Beat the dried red roses to a fine powder and sift them.

  3. Mix the sugar and rose powder well together.

Make the drops

  1. Wet the mixture with enough lemon juice to form a stiff paste.

  2. Set the mixture on a slow fire, stirring until it is scalding hot.

  3. Drop the mixture onto paper and set it near the fire to dry overnight.

  4. Once dry, cut into lozenges and store in a dry, neat box.

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. Sugar + rosetop 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

Refined loaf sugar
Forms the sweet body of the drops and sets into a firm, crisp sugar mass as it dries.
Dried red roses
Supply the rose flavour and aroma that define the drops.
Lemon juice
Moistens the sugar and rose powder into a paste that can be shaped, and adds a touch of acidity.

The step that matters

Heating the paste until scalding hot. Stirring over a slow fire must bring the sugar mixture to scalding heat so it can be dropped and will dry into a firm, crisp lozenge. Overheating can caramelise the sugar and change its colour and flavour, while underheating leaves it soft and sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rose. 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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