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Fondant Made with Egg White and Sugar

Fondant is a hard candy made from egg white and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fondant Made with Egg White and Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Break the egg white in a bowl, add cold water, and beat until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sifted confectioners' sugar, forming a handleable dough.

  3. Keep a little dry sugar on hand to prevent sticking.

Flavor and shape

  1. Divide the dough into portions and flavor to taste.

  2. Shape into balls and place a few nuts on top if desired.

  3. Roll the balls in granulated sugar.

Add optional finishes

  1. If using, cut candied fruit, mix with the fondant, cover with chocolate, and cut into squares.

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. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 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

Egg white
Adds body and helps bind the sugar into a smooth, pliable dough.
Confectioners' sugar
Provides the bulk of the candy and sets into a firm, smooth texture as it is worked.
Cold water
Dissolves part of the sugar so the mixture can be worked into a dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sifted confectioners' sugar. Adding sugar too fast leaves the dough stiff, dry, or lumpy. Adding it slowly lets the sugar hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, pliable fondant.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, chocolate):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate. 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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