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Dessert

Candy Puffs

Candy Puffs are a confection made from boiled sugar syrup, beaten egg whites, nuts, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candy Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water until they form a heavy thread.

Make the candy

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites, stirring constantly.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture begins to harden.

  4. Add the flavoring and nuts, and mix thoroughly.

  5. Drop spoonfuls onto a greased platter, shaping them like large eggs.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into the crisp, sweet body of the puffs.
Eggs whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the puffs their light, airy structure.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and crunch throughout the soft candy.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup slowly while beating. Pouring the hot syrup slowly while stirring constantly lets it blend evenly into the whipped whites. Pouring it in quickly can deflate the foam and cause the syrup to cook the egg whites unevenly, so the candy loses its light texture.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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