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Dessert

Strawberry Rock

A candied confection made by boiling sugar with strawberry juice and pulling the mixture into sticks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Strawberry Rock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 320°F (160°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the white center

  1. Combine 12 lbs sugar, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, and 2 quarts water in a large pot.

  2. Cook until the temperature reaches 320°F (160°C).

  3. Add strawberry juice and lower the temperature to 256°F (125°C).

  4. Pour mixture onto a slab and pull it on a hook, setting it aside for the center.

Make the pink outer layer

  1. Combine 4 lbs sugar, 1 pint water, and a small pinch of cream of tartar in another pot.

  2. Cook to 320°F (160°C).

  3. Pour mixture onto slab, color it a delicate pink, and pull it on a hook.

Shape and finish

  1. Form the pink mixture around the first batch and pull it out into small sticks.

  2. Once cold, chop into small pieces.

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 glassy candy structure as it cooks to a hard, clear set.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked evenly before reaching temperature.

The step that matters

Pulling the candy on the hook. Working the mixture while it cools makes it opaque and fine-grained, which affects its texture. Pulling too early or too late changes how it sets, so temperature must be watched closely.

“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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