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Dessert

Lemon Candy

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

  1. In a kettle, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

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

  3. Remove from heat and pour into a greased shallow dish.

Finish and flavor

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

  2. Work the mixture until evenly distributed, being careful not to overwork it.

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 candy base and provides the sweetness once cooked to a brittle stage.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming a grainy texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, sour tang that balances the sweetness of the candy.
Lemon extract
Provides the lemon aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Work the mixture until evenly distributed, being careful not to overwork it.. Once the acid and extract are added, the candy is still hot and pliable. Overworking it can make it cloudy and grainy as sugar recrystallizes, so stop as soon as the flavor is evenly mixed.

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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