Skip to main content
Dessert

Sponge Taffy

A chewy candy made from boiled glucose, sugar, and egg whites, flavored and folded, then cooled and cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sponge Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar

  1. Boil glucose and sugar over low heat until it reaches the 'ball' stage, stirring constantly with a wooden paddle.

  2. Add flavoring to taste.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Continue stirring and evaporating until the mixture does not stick to the back of your hand.

Shape and set

  1. Pour or scrape the mixture onto an oiled slab between iron bars.

  2. Oil your hands slightly and flatten the mass to the desired thickness.

  3. Let it rest until firm enough to cut into squares or cubes, then wrap in waxed 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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Glucose
Keeps the candy soft and chewy by limiting sugar crystallization.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk structure of the candy once cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they create the light, airy sponge texture.

The step that matters

Continue stirring and evaporating until the mixture does not stick to the back of your hand. Cooking off enough water sets the final texture. Too little cooking leaves the taffy sticky and soft, while overcooking makes it hard and 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes