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 ↓
French Fondant
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until it begins to boil.
Remove the spoon and wash down the sides with a brush dipped in cold water to prevent sugar crystals.
Cover and boil for five minutes.
Add cream of tartar and cook until it reaches the soft ball stage (238°F or 114°C).
Cool and work the fondant
Pour onto a damp marble slab and let it cool until a dent can be made on the surface.
Work the candy back and forth with a wooden spatula until it becomes a white, smooth, creamy paste.
Knead the mixture with your hands and place it in an earthen bowl.
Rest
Cover closely with a damp cloth and store in a cool place for twenty-four hours.
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 + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 sweet crystalline structure that the fondant sets from once cooled and worked.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the fondant smooth.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated into a syrup before cooking to the soft ball stage.
The step that matters
Washing down the sides of the pan. Stray sugar crystals clinging to the pan walls can fall back into the syrup and seed unwanted crystallisation, leaving a grainy rather than smooth fondant. Brushing them away with cold water dissolves them before they cause this.
“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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