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Clove Candy

A hard candy made with sugar, vinegar, water, butter, and clove oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Clove Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, vinegar, and water.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add butter and oil of cloves, and continue to cook without stirring until it reaches the hard crack stage.

  4. Remove from heat and add red fruit coloring if desired.

Cool and break

  1. Pour onto a greased surface and let cool before breaking into pieces.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy base and, when cooked to hard crack, sets into a brittle glass.
Vinegar
Acidity helps keep the sugar from recrystallizing, giving a smoother, clearer candy.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the brittle texture and gives a richer mouthfeel.
Oil of cloves
Provides the strong aromatic clove flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking without stirring to hard crack. Once the sugar dissolves, stirring can trigger crystallization and make the candy grainy. Cooking to the hard crack stage, at high sugar concentration, is what gives the candy its brittle, glassy set, so undercooking leaves it sticky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, butter. 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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