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 ↓
Cream, or Fondant
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar (or glucose) in a pot.
Heat the mixture, stirring until dissolved.
Cook until it reaches a soft ball stage.
Cool and work
Pour the mixture onto a marble slab that has been lightly sprinkled with water.
Allow it to cool until nearly cold.
Turn in the edges.
Use a long-handled wooden spatula to work it back and forth until it granulates into a smooth, white mass.
Knead the mixture thoroughly with your hands.
Place it into a crock and cover with a damp cloth.
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 sweet, bulk body of the fondant once it is cooked and crystallized.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the fondant smooth.
- Glucose
- Interferes with sugar crystallization, giving the fondant a softer, smoother texture.
The step that matters
Working the mixture until it granulates. Cooling the syrup before agitating lets many tiny sugar crystals form at once. Working it with a spatula then yields a smooth, white mass; stirring while hot would produce a coarse texture.
“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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