Skip to main content
Dessert

Vinegar Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Vinegar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens in water.

  3. Add flavoring just before removing 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and forms the hard, glassy structure of the candy as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives the candy a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture hardens in water. Sugar candy sets according to its temperature. Boiling to the hard-crack stage, tested by dropping a bit into cold water, gives a brittle set. Stopping early leaves it chewy or sticky, and going too far can scorch it.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes