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Dessert

White Cream Candy

A white candy made from sugar, water, vinegar, butter, glycerine, vanilla, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar, water, vinegar, butter, and glycerine in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring for 20 to 30 minutes, or until it becomes crisp when dropped in water.

  3. Just before pouring onto plates to cool, add the baking soda.

  4. After pouring onto plates, mix in the vanilla extract.

Cool, pull and cut

  1. Allow the candy to cool, then pull it to make it beautifully white.

  2. Cut into strips using kitchen shears.

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

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

  2. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 base that hardens into the candy when boiled to a crisp stage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising into a grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to create gas bubbles that lighten the candy and make it opaque white.
Glycerine
Acts as a humectant that keeps the candy soft and prevents it from becoming brittle.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before pouring. Baking soda reacts quickly with the hot acidic syrup, so it must be added at the last moment to trap bubbles that whiten the candy before it sets.

“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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