Name: À Caramels
Ingredients: sugar; corn syrup; water; food coloring (optional); almond paste (for base)

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

À Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Cut a template from cardboard in the desired shape.
Trace the outline on a lightly oiled marble surface with a pencil.
Using a piping bag, follow the contours with a double line of icing.
Once the icing is dry, fill the void with a layer of caramelized sugar, slightly colored, matching the thickness of the icing.
When the sugar is cool, detach the shapes and group them on a flat base of cooked almond paste, adhering them with sugar.
For decorative elements, pour caramelized sugar onto a lightly oiled marble, cut into strips before fully cooling, and shape them against a lightly oiled spherical metal mold.

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.

Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together485 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Syrup + almondtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together746 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).