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Dessert

Candy of Any Flavor

A hard candy made by boiling sugar with cream of tartar and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Candy of Any Flavor

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar

  1. In a large vessel, mix sugar and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil over a brisk fire, ensuring it does not burn; apply heat at the bottom.

  3. After 15 minutes, test by dropping a small portion into cold water.

  4. If it forms a thread when separated, control the heat to prevent burning.

  5. Continue testing until it becomes hard and brittle in cold water.

Flavor and shape

  1. Remove from heat and stir in flavoring.

  2. Pour into lightly greased shallow dishes and cool until handleable.

  3. Pull and roll into sticks or desired shapes.

Variation

  1. Alternatively, omit cream of tartar and cool slightly to make a soft white cream for bonbons.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and forms the hard, glassy structure as the syrup cooks and cools.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity partly breaks down sucrose, which helps keep the candy smooth rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Testing the cooking stage and controlling the heat. Sugar syrup changes quickly as it cooks. Too little heat leaves the candy sticky, while too much heat scorches the sugar and gives a bitter taste. Testing in cold water shows when it has reached the hard, brittle stage, and lowering the heat near the end prevents burning.

“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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