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Dessert

Honey Comb Lady Fingers

A candy made by cooking sugar and water with cream of tartar, then shaping into long, airy strands.

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 ↓

Honey Comb Lady Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Combine sugar and water in a large pot.

  2. Add cream of tartar.

  3. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it reaches 320°F to 330°F.

  4. Pour the cooked mixture onto a slab and color and flavor as desired.

Pull and shape

  1. Use a hook to pull the mixture, twisting out the air, and flatten it on a spinning table.

  2. Form the mixture around a wooden club, closing one end tightly.

  3. Blow a little air into the open end and close it quickly.

  4. Pull the mixture to about 3 feet long and double it up.

  5. Repeat this process four times.

  6. Pull out a strip about 6 feet long and fold one half over the other.

Cut

  1. Cut strips about 1 inch wide using a buttercup cutter.

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

Sugar
Forms the brittle glassy structure of the candy once cooked.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked evenly before it reaches temperature.

The step that matters

Cooking to 320°F to 330°F. Sugar must reach the correct temperature to set into a firm, brittle candy. Undercooked mixtures stay sticky and soft, while overcooking causes scorching or a bitter taste.

“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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