Name: Blow Candy
Ingredients: 5 lbs sugar; 4 oz glucose; small pinch of cream of tartar; 1 qt water; food coloring (optional); rose or teaberry flavoring (optional)

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 ↓

Blow Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Combine sugar, glucose, cream of tartar, and water in a copper pan.
Cook the mixture to 330°F (165°C).
Add food coloring if desired.
Pour the mixture onto a marble surface.
Let the mixture cool slightly.
Flavor the mixture with rose or teaberry.

Pull and shape

Pull the candy out slightly.
Double the candy.
Continue pulling until it is partly cool.
Shape the candy into a strip about 3 feet long and 3 inches wide.
Place a 3‑foot long, 4‑inch diameter tin pipe on the candy.
Cover the pipe.
Remove the pipe while blowing air into the candy to create a hollow center.
Stretch the candy into a 12‑foot long stick.
Cut the stick into four 3‑foot lengths.
Repeat the process with a smaller 1‑inch diameter pipe.
Cover the smaller pipe.
Blow air into the smaller pipe.
Stretch the candy into strips 14 inches thick.

Cool and break

Let the strips cool.
Mark the strips into 3‑inch sticks.
Break the sticks off when ready.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,584 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + rosetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,086 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Forms the main candy mass that sets into a brittle, glassy structure as it cools.
Glucose: Inhibits sugar crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and pliable for pulling.
Cream of tartar: Acidity helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy clear and smooth.
Water: Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture to 330°F (165°C). Cooking the syrup to this hard-crack range removes enough water that the candy sets firm and brittle. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and will not hold its hollow shape; overcooking makes it too hard to pull and shape.

“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.