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Dessert

Lemon Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, tartaric acid, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Candy

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a pan.

  2. Boil until a drop in cold water becomes brittle.

Flavor and shape

  1. Pour into a shallow buttered dish.

  2. Once cool enough to handle, add tartaric acid and lemon extract.

  3. Work the mixture until evenly distributed.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 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, glassy candy base as it dissolves and cooks down.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar from recrystallizing into grainy crystals.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp tartness that balances the sugar's sweetness.
Lemon extract
Supplies the lemon aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling to the brittle stage. The sugar's final texture depends on how far the syrup is cooked. Stopping early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes it hard and risks a bitter, scorched taste as the sugar darkens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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