Name: Infusion of Roses
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling water; 1 oz red rose leaves; sugar or honey to taste

Why it works: Rose and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,584 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Infusion of Roses

Ingredients

1 pint boiling water
1 oz red rose leaves
sugar or honey to taste

Directions

Place the rose leaves in a china teapot.
Pour boiling water over the leaves.
Let the infusion steep for 10 minutes.
Strain the infusion and allow it to cool.
Sweeten with sugar or honey to taste.

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.

Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red rose leaves: Provide the floral aroma and flavour that the water extracts during steeping.
Sugar or honey: Add sweetness to balance the delicate floral flavour of the infusion.

“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.