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Syrup of Roses

A sweet syrup made by steeping damask rose leaves in boiling water, then adding sugar and optionally clarifying with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Syrup of Roses

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Place the rose leaves in an earthen vessel and pour in the boiling water.

  2. Cover the vessel and let it steep for 6 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the sugar to the strained juice.

  2. Boil over medium heat until it reaches a good consistency, skimming off any foam.

  3. If desired, use the eggs to clarify the syrup.

Bottle

  1. Preserve the syrup in bottles with tightly corked lids.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rose + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Damask rose leaves
Provide the floral aroma and flavor that the water extracts during steeping.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the infusion and thickens it into a syrup as it boils down.
Eggs
Optional clarifier: egg whites bind impurities that are then skimmed away, leaving a clearer syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling to the right consistency. Boiling too briefly leaves the syrup thin and prone to spoiling, while boiling too long makes it overly thick or crystallize as it cools. Skimming foam keeps the syrup clean and clear.

“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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