Why it works: Cassia and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Candied Cassia
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flavouring
Powder the brown cassia, musk, and ambergris together.
Make and set the candy
Boil the sugar until it reaches candy height.
Mix the powdered ingredients into the boiled sugar.
Pour the mixture into thinly buttered saucers.
Allow to cool, then remove from saucers.
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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Cassia + sugartop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together211 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
- Brown cassia powder
- Gives the candy its warm, sweet, spiced flavour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the candy and, boiled to candy height, sets hard and brittle as it cools.
- Musk
- Adds a deep, lingering aroma to the candy.
- Ambergris
- Adds a rich, long-lasting aroma that blends with the spice.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to candy height. Sugar must be cooked until enough water has evaporated for it to set firm when cooled. If it is undercooked the candy stays soft and sticky, and if it is overcooked it becomes bitter and darkens or burns.
“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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