Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Sugar Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.
Bring to a boil.
Add cream of tartar and continue boiling until a drop forms a hard ball in cold water.
Flavor and set
Add flavoring and pour into pans to cool before pulling.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Provides the sweetness and forms the crystalline structure of the candy as the syrup cooks.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.
The step that matters
Boiling until a drop forms a hard ball in cold water. The syrup's final temperature determines how firm the candy sets. Stopping early leaves it soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes it hard and brittle.
“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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