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Dessert

Candy of Any Flavor

A simple candy made by boiling sugar with cream of tartar and flavoring, then cooling and shaping.

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

Make the candy

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

  2. Boil over a brisk fire, ensuring it does not burn; heat should be applied 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, then remove from heat.

  6. Stir in your desired flavoring.

Shape and finish

  1. Pour into lightly greased shallow dishes and cool until manageable.

  2. Pull and roll into sticks or shape as desired.

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
Forms the bulk of the candy and, once boiled and cooled, sets into a hard, brittle glass.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming and keeping the candy smooth.

The step that matters

Testing in cold water. Sugar syrup changes quickly near the end of cooking, and a few degrees decide between a chewy and a brittle candy. Testing small amounts in cold water shows the stage reached, and removing the pan too late causes scorching and a bitter taste.

“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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