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Dessert

White Sugar Candy to Pull

A hard candy made from white sugar, water, cream of tartar, butter, and flavoring, pulled until white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Sugar Candy to Pull

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for about 15 minutes without stirring.

  3. Test by dropping a little into cold water; it should set hard.

Pour and pull

  1. Pour onto a buttered dish and let cool slightly.

  2. Flavor when cool enough to handle and pull until white.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + pepperminttop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together958 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Forms the candy itself, setting hard and glassy as the syrup cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth rather than grainy.
Butter
Adds richness and softness, helping the cooled candy stay pliable and easier to pull.

The step that matters

Test the syrup in cold water. Sugar must boil long enough to reach the hard-crack stage, or the candy stays sticky after cooling. Stirring during boiling can trigger crystallization, which makes the candy grainy.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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