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Dessert

Ginger Candy

A candy made from clarified sugar, ginger, and optional egg white, essence, or powdered ginger, formed into lozenges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy base

  1. Boil the clarified sugar until a drop becomes brittle when cold.

  2. For a common article, mix in ground ginger; for a superior article, add beaten egg white and essence of ginger.

  3. For another variation, macerate coarsely powdered ginger in boiling water for 2 hours, strain, and add loaf and brown sugar.

Make the lozenges

  1. To make ginger lozenges, dissolve gum arabic in hot water, then stir in loaf sugar and powdered ginger.

  2. Roll the mixture into a paste, flatten it, and cut out lozenges with a round stamp.

  3. Dry the lozenges near the fire or 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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  3. Ginger + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Clarified sugar
Forms the sweet candy base that sets firm as it cools and dries.
Ground ginger
Gives the candy its characteristic spicy aroma and flavour.
Egg white
Adds body and a lighter texture to the superior version.
Gum arabic
Acts as a binder that helps the lozenge paste hold its shape.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour to the variation.

The step that matters

Boil the clarified sugar until a drop becomes brittle when cold. Sugar must reach the correct concentration to set hard when cooled. Boiling too short leaves the candy soft and sticky, while overcooking can make it bitter and brittle.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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