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 ↓
Ice Cream Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a pot.
Boil the mixture until it hardens when dropped in cold water.
Remove from heat and pull the candy until it turns white.
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
- White sugar
- Forms the candy's sweet, crystalline structure as the syrup cooks and hardens.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the syrup to help prevent unwanted sugar crystallization, keeping the candy smooth.
The step that matters
Boil until it hardens in cold water. Sugar syrup sets according to its temperature, so boiling too little leaves the candy soft and boiling too long makes it brittle. The cold water test shows when the syrup has reached the right concentration.
“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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