Skip to main content

Rose-Glycerine Soap

Contains caustic soda lye, handle with care.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Geranium and bergamot work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Rose-Glycerine Soap

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the coconut oil, tallow, and castor oil together in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the caustic soda lye at 111°F (44°C).

  3. Cover and allow to steam for an hour.

  4. Add the sugar solution and alcohol, then cover the kettle again.

  5. Once melted, color and scent the soap as desired.

  6. Pour the mixture into little iron molds and let it cool.

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. Geranium + bergamottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Lemon + bergamottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

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

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, geranium, lemon, bergamot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes