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Dessert

To Make Fondant

A sugar glaze made by cooking sugar, cream of tartar, and hot water until thick and white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

To Make Fondant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a small pot, combine the sugar and cream of tartar.

  2. Pour the hot water over the sugar mixture.

  3. Cover the pot and cook without stirring until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

Cool and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool until you can touch the surface without it sticking to your finger.

  2. Stir rapidly with a stiff spoon until thick and white, but do not let it grain.

  3. Pour into a lightly buttered dish.

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 + creamtop 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and forms the crystal structure that gives fondant its smooth, opaque body.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity slows sugar crystallization, helping keep the fondant smooth rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Stir rapidly after cooling. Stirring once the mixture has cooled and thickened encourages many tiny sugar crystals, giving a smooth, white texture. Stirring too early, or stirring a hot syrup, lets larger crystals form, so the fondant turns grainy.

“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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