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Dessert

To Make Fondant

Fondant is a sugar candy made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar, then cooling and stirring until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Fondant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a granite or porcelain kettle over high heat.

  2. Once boiling, add the cream of tartar.

  3. Cook the syrup until it reaches a jelly-like consistency, wiping down the kettle sides with a cloth and cold water.

  4. Test the syrup by dropping it into a cup of cold water; it is done when it can be rolled into a ball.

  5. Remove from heat and place the kettle in a large vessel of cold water.

Cream and store

  1. Flavor with vanilla while still warm, not hot.

  2. Stir briskly with a wooden spatula in the same direction until it turns white and creamy.

  3. Once the sugar creams, turn it out onto a sheet of tin or a cake board and knead until smooth.

  4. Store in an earthen jar covered with a damp cotton cloth and tightly sealed.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the crystalline body of the candy once the syrup is cooled and worked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent large sugar crystals from forming.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup before cooking.

The step that matters

Cool the syrup before stirring. Syrup must cool while still warm, not hot, before it is stirred. Stirring a hot syrup forms large crystals, leaving a grainy rather than smooth fondant.

“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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