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Dessert

Plain Cream or Fondant

Plain fondant is a sugar candy made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it reaches the thread stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Plain Cream or Fondant

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Stir until dissolved, but do not stir while boiling.

  3. Boil until three drops fall slowly and a thread forms from the third drop.

  4. Watch for bubbles breaking slowly as it boils.

  5. Skim the sugar and the sides of the kettle with a wet cloth on a fork as scum arises.

  6. When it threads, pour into a flat dish.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the crystalline base that sets into the fondant's smooth texture as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup to help prevent unwanted sugar crystallisation.

The step that matters

Boil until a thread forms from the third drop. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before cooling. Too little boiling leaves the fondant soft and runny; too much makes it hard. Judging by the thread test keeps the texture right.

“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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