Skip to main content
Dessert

To Candy Ginger

A sweet preserve of ginger coated in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Candy Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the sugar until fine.

  2. Prepare the ginger by peeling and slicing it.

Cook the ginger

  1. Combine the sugar and ginger in a saucepan.

  2. Add enough water to cover the ginger.

  3. Heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the ginger is tender.

Finish and store

  1. Remove the ginger and let it cool on a wire rack.

  2. Once cooled, roll the ginger in sugar to coat.

  3. Store in an airtight container.

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Fine loaf sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that cooks into the ginger and later forms a sweet coating.
Ginger
Provides the main flavour and the firm, chewy texture once simmered until tender.

The step that matters

Simmering until the ginger is tender. Simmering slowly lets sugar syrup gradually replace the water inside the ginger. Cooking too hard can toughen or break the pieces, and stopping too early leaves them fibrous.

“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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes