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Dessert

Ice Cream Taffy

A candy made by boiling sugar, butter, water, cream of tartar, and vanilla until thick, then pulling until white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ice Cream Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, and enough water to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Boil for 8 minutes.

Finish and pull

  1. Add cream of tartar and boil for 7 minutes longer.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

  3. Pull the mixture until it turns white.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Sugar
Forms the sweet base that cooks into a firm, chewy candy as it boils.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent the sugar from recrystallizing into grainy crystals.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives the candy a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pull the mixture until it turns white. Pulling incorporates air and cools the candy so it becomes opaque and lighter in colour. Stopping too early leaves it glossy and sticky, while over-working it can make it hard to shape.

“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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