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Dessert

Cream Fondant

Fondant is a sugar candy made by cooking sugar with water and cream of tartar to 238°F, then cooling and creaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Fondant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and enough water to dissolve it in a large pot.

  2. Add cream of tartar and cook the mixture to 238°F (114°C).

Cool and work

  1. Lightly sprinkle a slab with water and pour the cooked mixture onto it.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

  3. Cream it as usual.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 crystalline body of the candy once the syrup is cooked and cooled.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the fondant smooth.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 238°F (114°C). The final temperature sets how much water remains in the syrup, which determines the firmness of the cooled fondant. Undercooked syrup yields a soft, sticky result, while overcooked syrup becomes hard and grainy.

“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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