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Honey Cream-candy

A hard candy made from sugar, molasses, butter, and lemon oil, thickened with cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Honey Cream-candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water over heat.

  2. When nearly done, add the molasses and cook until well done.

  3. Stir in the butter and flavor with oil of lemon to your taste.

  4. To prevent graining, add the cream of tartar.

  5. Pull the candy rapidly and handle it lightly.

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. Butter + creamtop 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a crystalline-free, sweet structure when cooked.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, color and a rich flavor to the candy.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, smoother bite and richer mouthfeel.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Pull the candy rapidly and handle it lightly. Pulling air into the hot sugar mass while it cools makes it opaque and lighter in texture. Rough or prolonged handling can encourage sugar crystals to form, leading to graininess.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, butter, cream. 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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