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Dessert

Chewing Taffy

Chewing taffy is a sweet confection made from sugar, water, glucose, butter, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chewing Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture begins to boil.

  3. Add glucose, butter, and cream of tartar; stir until well mixed.

  4. Boil the mixture until it reaches the 'crack' stage.

Cool and cut

  1. Pour onto an oiled slab and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, cut into cubes and wrap in wax paper.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 structure and sweetness once the syrup cools and sets.
Glucose
Helps keep the candy soft and chewy by interfering with sugar crystallization.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the candy tender and smooth to chew.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from forming grainy crystals.

The step that matters

Boil to the 'crack' stage. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the candy sets firm but chewy as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while going too far makes it brittle.

“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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