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Dessert

Ice Cream Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, corn syrup, water, egg whites, nuts, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ice Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until it forms a very hard ball when tested in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.

Finish the candy

  1. Pour the hot mixture into the beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat until light and hard.

  3. Just before it hardens, fold in the nuts.

  4. Optionally, add candied cherries and raisins.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 sweet, hard candy base as the syrup cooks down.
Corn syrup
Keeps the sugar syrup smooth by discouraging crystallization.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the candy its light, airy texture.
English walnuts or assorted nut meats
Adds crunch and nutty flavor throughout the candy.

The step that matters

Fold in the nuts just before the mixture hardens. Once the hot syrup cools and sets, it becomes too stiff to mix evenly, so the nuts must be folded in while it is still workable to distribute them without breaking the airy foam.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, syrup, egg, vanilla):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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