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Dessert

Lemon Candy

A hard lemon-flavored candy made by boiling sugar, water, and tartar, then adding lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 3½ pounds of sugar, 1½ pints of water, and 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar in a kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased dish.

Flavor and shape

  1. Once cooled enough to handle, add 1 teaspoon of tartaric acid and 1 teaspoon of lemon extract.

  2. Work the mixture until the ingredients are evenly distributed, but do not overmix to maintain transparency.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a hard, brittle glass as the syrup cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, tart bite that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup sets according to its final temperature, which controls how much water remains. Boiling too little leaves a sticky candy that will not harden; boiling too long makes it brittle enough to break or burn. The cold-water test checks that the syrup has reached the hard-crack stage.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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