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Cream Candy

A brittle candy made from sugar, vinegar, lemon extract, cream of tartar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cream Candy

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 Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, lemon extract, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.

  2. Add a little water to moisten the sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when dropped in water.

  4. Add the lemon extract just before pouring the mixture onto buttered plates.

Cool and cut

  1. Allow to cool, then cut into squares.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Forms the candy base and, once boiled to a hard stage, sets firm and brittle as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from recrystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.
Cream of tartar
Acid that inverts some sugar, helping prevent grainy crystals and giving a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle when dropped in water. Sugar candy sets according to how far its water has boiled off. Stopping too early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while going too far can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More cream candy recipes

Coconut 29Ice 29French 18Maple 13Chocolate 8White 6 See all 117 →

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