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Dessert

Candy. Fondant.

A sweet, pliable candy made from sugar, water, and cream of tartar, flavored and colored as desired.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Candy. Fondant.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Combine the granulated sugar and water in a large pot and stir until the mixture boils.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and boil without stirring until it forms a soft ball when tested in cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture onto buttered platters and let it sit until it wrinkles when the plate is tipped.

Flavor and shape

  1. Add your desired flavoring and coloring, then beat the mixture until stiff.

  2. Work the fondant into any fancy shape desired using dates, figs, or nuts, or create layers of different colors.

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

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

  2. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Cream + datestop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 smooth, fine-grained texture as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming large grains and keeping the candy smooth.

The step that matters

Let the cooked syrup sit until it wrinkles before beating. Cooling the boiled syrup undisturbed lets it begin to crystallize into tiny crystals. Beating it too early, while hot, produces large crystals and a grainy rather than smooth fondant.

Swap the dates

The recipe marks dates as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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