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Dessert

Lemon Stick Candy

A candied sugar stick flavored with lemon and tartaric acid, finished with a white stripe.

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 ↓

Lemon Stick Candy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 330°F (165°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the candy

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water.

  2. Cook the mixture until it reaches 330°F (165°C).

  3. Pour the cooked candy onto a slab.

Flavor and shape

  1. Pull about ¼ lb of the candy and keep it warm for the white stripe.

  2. Flavor the remaining candy with tartaric acid to your preference.

  3. Work the flavored candy until it is firm enough to shape.

  4. Add the white stripe to the flavored candy and finish as peppermint stick.

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 main body of the candy and sets into a glassy, brittle texture as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, sour tang to the flavored candy.

The step that matters

Cooking to 330°F (165°C). The final temperature sets the sugar's water content and therefore the candy's hardness. Undercooked candy stays soft and sticky, while overcooked candy becomes brittle and may taste burnt.

“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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