Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugar Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, vinegar, water, butter, baking soda, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Sugar Candy

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, water, butter, and dissolved baking soda in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring until it hardens but is not brittle when tested in cold water.

  3. Add your choice of flavoring.

Cool and shape

  1. Pour the mixture onto buttered plates to cool.

  2. Once cooled, you can pull the candy or cut it into squares.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, hard candy mass as it cooks and sets.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallising into a grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid and adds air bubbles, giving the candy a lighter, airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the candy's texture and richness.

The step that matters

Boiling without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger crystallisation, making the candy grainy instead of smooth and glassy. Judging doneness by testing in cold water helps you stop at the hard but not brittle stage.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, butter. 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.

More sugar candy recipes

Maple 18Brown 10Vanilla 4White 4 See all 44 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes