Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Stick Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the syrup
In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, vinegar (or cream of tartar), and glycerine.
Boil without stirring for 20 to 30 minutes, until it becomes crisp when dropped in water.
Pour and flavor
Just before pouring onto greased platters, add baking soda.
Pour the mixture onto the platters to cool.
Once partly cool, pour the flavoring over the top.
Pull and shape
Pull the candy until it is very white.
Draw the candy into sticks of your desired size.
Cut the sticks with shears into sticks or kiss-shaped drops.
Color the candy if desired.
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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,806 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Vinegar + vanillatop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together804 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a brittle, glassy structure as the syrup cools.
- Vinegar or cream of tartar
- Acid that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
- Glycerine
- Keeps the candy soft and prevents it from becoming overly hard or grainy.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the hot syrup, adding tiny bubbles that lighten the candy and make it whiten when pulled.
The step that matters
Boiling without stirring. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set crisp when cooled. Stirring can trigger crystallization, which makes the candy grainy, so the syrup should be left undisturbed while it boils.
Swap the vanilla
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar):
- Vanillathe original
- Strawberryfits about as well
- Pineapplefits about as well
- Apricotfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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