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 ↓
Old-fashioned Peppermint Cuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar base
Combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water in a large pot.
Cook over medium heat until the mixture reaches 330°F (165°C).
Pour the cooked mixture onto a slab to cool.
Color and shape
Color ¼ lb of the mixture with red food coloring and keep it warm.
Pull the remaining batch until it is nice and white, being careful not to twist the air out.
Form the white batch into a round loaf and place 8 thin red stripes on top.
Pull out pieces the size of sticks and cut them using a butter cup cutter.
Flavor the sticks as desired.
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 + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 once cooked to a hard, glassy structure.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the syrup to help prevent sugar crystals from forming a grainy texture.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked evenly into a syrup.
The step that matters
Pull the remaining batch until it is nice and white, being careful not to twist the air out.. Pulling incorporates air into the cooled sugar, turning it opaque white and giving a lighter texture. Twisting the air out can collapse these bubbles and leave the candy dense and translucent.
“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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