Name: Rose Coloring for Frosting
Ingredients: ¼ ounce powdered alum; ¼ ounce cream of tartar; 1 ounce cochineal; 4 ounces loaf sugar; ¼ teaspoon baking soda; 1 pint clear soft water

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rose Coloring for Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Mix together the powdered alum, cream of tartar, cochineal, loaf sugar, and baking soda.
Boil the mixture in 1 pint of clear soft water for 10 minutes.
Allow to cool, then bottle and cork for use.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cochineal: Natural red dye that provides the colour.
Powdered alum: Helps the cochineal colour bind and shift toward a stronger red.
Cream of tartar: Adds acidity that pulls the colour toward a clearer red.
Baking soda: Raises the mixture's pH, which changes the cochineal's colour.

“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.