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Dessert

Ginger Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, water, ginger, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Ginger Candy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar. Stir until sugar dissolves.

  2. Add sliced ginger and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer until the mixture reaches the hard crack stage (300°F or 150°C).

Cool and store

  1. Remove from heat and pour onto a greased surface to cool.

  2. Once cool, break into pieces and store in an airtight container.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 candy base and, once cooked to hard crack, sets into a brittle, glassy texture.
Fresh ginger
Supplies the main flavour and aroma, and its sliced pieces are cooked into the syrup.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming and keeping the candy smooth.

The step that matters

Simmering to the hard crack stage. Sugar syrup sets hard only when cooked to about 300°F (150°C). Undercooked syrup stays sticky and will not form brittle candy, while overcooked syrup can taste bitter or burnt.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

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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