Name: Boiled Sugar for Confections
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; ½ cup water; ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

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 ↓

Boiled Sugar for Confections

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
½ cup water
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions

Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.
Heat over medium until the sugar dissolves.
Increase heat and boil until the mixture reaches 238°F (114°C) for soft ball stage.
Use a sugar thermometer for accuracy or test in cold water.
Once at the right temperature, remove from heat.

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: Provides sweetness and forms the syrup that sets into candy as it cools and concentrates.
Cream of tartar: Acidity helps keep the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup firms as its water boils off and its concentration rises. Stopping at the target temperature of 238°F (114°C) controls the final texture, so removing the pan too early or too late changes whether the candy is soft or hard.

“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.