Name: Sunshine Candy
Ingredients: 10 lbs sugar; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; 2 quarts water

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 ↓

Sunshine Candy

Ingredients

10 lbs sugar
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 quarts water

Directions

Make the base

Combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water in a kettle and mix well.
Place the kettle on the fire and bring to a boil.
Once boiling, remove the paddle, cover the kettle, and let it steam for a few minutes.
Remove the cover, wash the sides of the kettle, and insert a thermometer.
Cook the mixture until it reaches 335°F (170°C).
Pour the hot mixture onto a greased slab.

Color and flavor

Color small pieces of the candy red, green, and lavender.
Flavor the remaining batch with peppermint, anise, lime, or your choice of flavor.
On a spinning table, flatten the candy and divide it into three separate pieces.

Pull and shape

Bump the pieces together and pull them into thin strips about ¼ inch wide.
Cut the strips with a buttercup cutter.
For another batch, pull the candy into round shapes and cut like buttercups.
For a third batch, take a small piece and pull it into a stripe.
Color half of the stripe red and flavor with cinnamon.
Color the other half green and flavor with lime.
When cool, form the candy into a round loaf and stripe it with small white stripes.
Cut the loaf into buttercup shapes.
Store the candy in tight jars.

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).

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, once cooked, sets into a firm, glassy structure.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the syrup to help prevent sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy smooth.
Water: Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a clear syrup without scorching.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture to 335°F (170°C). Sugar syrup hardens according to its final temperature, as water evaporates and concentration rises. Stopping early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while overcooking makes it brittle or scorched, so the thermometer reading matters.

“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.