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Cream Candies

A sugar candy made with gum arabic, cream of tartar, and optional chocolate, flavoring, or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Candies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the gum-arabic and cream of tartar to the sugar mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture without boiling it to the brittle stage.

  4. Check the consistency by blowing through a skimmer; it should form feather filaments.

Finish the candy

  1. Remove from heat and rub the syrup against the sides of the dish with an iron spoon.

  2. For chocolate candy, add the sifted chocolate and your chosen flavoring.

  3. For coconut candy, add coconut while the mixture is still soft and stir until cool.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and provides its sweetness and structure as it crystallises.
Gum-arabic
Helps keep the sugar crystals small, giving the candy a smooth texture.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising too early.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling to the brittle stage. Heating too fast or stirring can cause large sugar crystals to form, making the candy grainy. Checking the syrup's stage by feel or test keeps the sugar concentration right for a smooth set.

“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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