Name: Blow Candy
Ingredients: 5 lbs sugar; 4 oz glucose; small pinch of cream of tartar; 1 qt water; a little color; rose or teaberry flavoring

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 ↓

Blow Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

In a copper pan, combine sugar, glucose, cream of tartar, and water.
Cook the mixture to 330°F (165°C).

Pull and flavor

Add a little color and pour the mixture onto a marble surface.
When cool enough to handle, flavor with rose or teaberry.
Pull the candy out slightly, double it up, and continue pulling.
Shape the candy into a strip about 3 feet long and 3 inches wide.

Blow the candy

Lay a 3-foot long, 1-inch diameter tin pipe on the candy and press it down.
Cover the pipe with the candy, then roll it around the pipe.
Pull the pipe out while blowing air into the hole to keep it inflated.
Stretch the candy into a 12-foot long stick and cut it into four 3-foot lengths.
Place the lengths together and cover with the tin pipe again.
Repeat the process of pulling the pipe out and blowing air into the hole.
Stretch the candy into strips 1½ inches thick and let them cool.
Mark the strips into 3-inch pieces and break them off.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,584 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + rosetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,086 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a brittle, glassy structure as it cooks.
Glucose: Inhibits sugar crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and pliable for pulling.
Cream of tartar: Acid that helps prevent sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy clear.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture to 330°F (165°C). The final temperature sets how much water remains in the syrup, which determines whether the candy will be pliable enough to pull and blow or too hard or sticky. Stopping early or overcooking changes its texture noticeably.

“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.