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Dessert

Corn Starch Candy

A simple candy made by boiling water and sugar, then adding dissolved corn starch and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Starch Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil without stirring.

  2. Dissolve 2 teaspoons corn starch in a little water.

Finish the candy

  1. When the candy mixture hardens in water, add the dissolved corn starch while stirring rapidly.

  2. Once done, pour the mixture into a pan, add flavoring, and pull the candy.

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 + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that boils down and hardens to form the candy's body and sweetness.
Corn starch
Interferes with sugar crystal formation, helping the candy stay smooth and pliable when pulled.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved corn starch while stirring rapidly. Starch added at the wrong moment or stirred too slowly can clump or fail to blend evenly. Rapid stirring spreads the starch through the hot syrup so it is distributed evenly, which helps the candy set smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

“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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