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Dessert

Sugar of Roses in Various Figures

A candied rose bud confection made by boiling sugar with rose water and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Sugar of Roses in Various Figures

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roses

  1. Chip off the white part of the rose buds and dry them in the sun.

  2. Pound the dried rose buds very fine.

Make the rose sugar

  1. Wet the loaf sugar with rose water and boil it to a candy height.

  2. Add the powdered roses and lemon juice to the sugar mixture.

  3. Mix well, then spread it on a pie plate and cut into lozenges or desired shapes.

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. Rose + sugartop 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

Rose buds
Supply the main floral aroma and flavor once dried and powdered.
Loaf sugar
Forms the sweet candy base that hardens as it cools and holds its shape.
Rose water
Adds extra rose aroma to the sugar as it is wetted and boiled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the floral flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to candy height. Boiling concentrates the sugar, and the stopping point decides how firm the candy sets as it cools. Too short a boil leaves it sticky and soft, while a longer boil makes it hard and brittle, so the cook should watch the mixture closely.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, sugar. 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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