Skip to main content
Dessert

Vinegar Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vinegar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and vinegar to the melted butter.

  3. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when tested in cold water.

Shape and finish

  1. Pour onto a buttered platter to cool.

  2. Once cool, pull, flavor, and cut into small pieces.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy's body, becoming hard and brittle as the mixture boils and cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth rather than grainy and sharpens the flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer bite, and helps the candy release from the pan.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup hardens as its water boils off and its temperature rises. Stopping too early leaves the candy sticky and soft, while boiling too long makes it dark, bitter and hard to cut.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes