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Dessert

Almond Candy

A sweet candy made by boiling sugar with cream of tartar, then coating almonds and cutting into strips.

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 ↓

Almond Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar

  1. Boil sugar with a little cream of tartar until it cracks.

Prepare the slab

  1. Prepare a marble slab.

  2. Place four small bars on the slab to prevent the sugar from running off.

Pour, top and cut

  1. Pour the hot candy onto the slab.

  2. Sprinkle the candy with almonds.

  3. Cover the almonds with more candy to your desired thickness.

  4. When the candy is nearly cold, cut it into long narrow strips.

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).

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy's structure and sweetness as it cooks and then sets firm when cooled.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps keep the sugar smooth by preventing large sugar crystals from forming.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour that contrasts with the brittle sugar layer.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar until it cracks. Sugar cooked too briefly stays soft and sticky, while sugar cooked too long darkens and turns bitter. Stopping at the cracking point gives a brittle, clean-tasting candy.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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