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Dessert

Cream Sugar Candy

A candy made from sugar, water, egg whites, vanilla, tartaric acid, and berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cream Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until stringy consistency.

  3. Strain mixture.

  4. Let it cool slightly while stirring continuously.

  5. Add egg whites and beat thoroughly.

Prepare the berry liquid

  1. Dissolve tartaric acid in cold water.

  2. Pour over berries.

  3. Let stand 24 hours.

  4. Strain berry mixture.

Finish and store

  1. Add 1.5 pounds sugar to each pint of liquid.

  2. Heat mixture until sugar dissolves.

  3. Bottle the candy.

  4. Store in a cool place.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled, the syrup body that holds the candy together.
Egg whites
Whipped into the cooled syrup to add foam and a lighter, airy texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp tartness and helps keep the sugar from crystallizing.
Berries
Supply the main fruit flavor, color and acidity of the candy.

The step that matters

Boil until stringy consistency. The syrup must reach the right sugar concentration. Stopping too early leaves it runny and unset, while boiling too long makes the candy hard and brittle as it cools.

“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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