Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. 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.
Cook and flavour
Boil the clarified sugar until it reaches the 'Ball' stage.
Flavour the sugar with essence of ginger or powdered ginger.
Pour and set
Rub some of the sugar against the sides of the pan with a spatula until it turns white.
Pour the mixture into oiled tins.
Place the tins in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) to set.
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 + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together14,054 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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
- Clarified sugar
- Forms the candy's body; cooking it to the Ball stage sets it firm and glassy as it cools.
- Ginger
- Adds the main aroma and spicy flavour to the sugar.
The step that matters
Boil the sugar to the 'Ball' stage. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the candy sets firm when cool. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes it hard, brittle, or prone to burning.
“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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