Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Ice Cream Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the syrup
Boil the sugar, water, vinegar, and glycerine together until the mixture spins a heavy thread. Remove the mixture from heat.
Flavor and pour
Add the cream of tartar and flavoring extract.
Pour the mixture onto a large buttered platter.
Pull
When sufficiently cool, pull the mixture until it turns white.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,806 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,064 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the sweet candy base that sets into the finished texture.
- Glycerine
- Helps keep the candy soft and slows sugar crystallization.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing into grains.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents graining.
The step that matters
Pulling the candy once it is cool enough. Pulling while the mass is still too hot makes it hard to handle and does not whiten it properly. Once cooled, pulling incorporates air and encourages tiny sugar crystals to form, which turns the candy white and opaque.
“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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