Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sugar Taffy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Dissolve the sugar in water with citric acid.
Boil the mixture and remove any foam.
Test by dropping a bit in cold water; it should crack.
Finish and set
Add the juice of the lemons or oranges and boil again until thick.
Pour into buttered pans in a thin layer.
Mark into square blocks before it cools to ensure even breaking.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
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, as it cooks to a syrup, sets into a hard, brittle mass.
- Citric acid
- Adds tartness and helps prevent the sugar from recrystallizing into grainy crystals.
- Lemon or orange juice
- Adds acidity and flavour, and further helps keep the sugar syrup smooth rather than grainy.
The step that matters
Testing the cold-water crack. Sugar candy sets according to how far its syrup has cooked. Dropping a little into cold water shows whether it has reached the crack stage; too little cooking leaves a soft, sticky taffy, while overcooking makes it bitter and hard to eat.
“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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