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Dessert

Fruit Tablets— Pure Sugar

A candy made by boiling sugar, cream of tartar, and water, then cooling and rolling into tablets.

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 ↓

Fruit Tablets— Pure Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar

  1. Combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water in a large kettle.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Cover with a tin or wooden lid and steam for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove the cover.

  5. Wash the inside of the kettle with a damp sponge or scrub brush.

  6. Cook the mixture until it reaches 330°F (165°C).

Shape the tablets

  1. Pour the cooked mixture onto a cold, greased slab.

  2. Fold the slab up.

  3. Add acid, flavor, and color to your preference.

  4. Once cool, run the mixture through tablet rollers.

  5. Coat the tablets with sugar.

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 bulk of the tablets and provides all of the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it reaches 330°F (165°C). Sugar must reach the correct temperature to set into a firm tablet that holds its shape. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and soft, while overcooked syrup turns hard and brittle or darkens.

“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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