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 ↓
Nut Bar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine the sugar, cream of tartar, and boiling water in a saucepan.
Stir until thoroughly dissolved.
Boil the mixture without stirring until it reaches a light straw color.
Set the nuts
Place plenty of almonds in a buttered tin.
Pour the syrup over the nuts.
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).
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Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,130 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Granulated sugar
- Provides the sweetness and, when boiled, the caramel flavor and hard brittle set.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that helps keep the cooking syrup smooth by discouraging sugar crystals from forming.
- Almonds
- Supply the crunchy texture and nutty flavor that the brittle syrup binds together.
The step that matters
Boil without stirring until light straw color. Stirring can encourage sugar to crystallize, making the syrup grainy. Stopping at light straw color keeps the flavor mild and the bar brittle rather than bitter and hard to bite.
Swap the almond
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):
- Almondthe original
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Hazelnutfits less well
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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