Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓
Cream Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
In a pot, combine 3 cups of white sugar with enough water to dissolve it and bring to a boil.
Dissolve 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar in a little water and add it to the boiling mixture without stirring.
Use a wet mop to keep the syrup from sticking to the sides of the pot.
Boil until a drop of syrup hardens almost immediately in a glass of cold water.
If desired, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla as you remove the candy from the heat.
Cool and shape
Butter a tin pan and place it in a larger pan filled with cold water.
Pour the candy into the greased pan and turn it over until cool enough to pull.
Once white, stretch and cut into small chips with scissors.
Rest
Place the chips in a covered container for a few hours to become creamy.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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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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Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,050 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- White sugar
- Forms the bulk of the candy and, once cooled and worked, sets into a soft, fine-grained texture.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidity that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy smooth.
The step that matters
Boiling without stirring. Stirring the syrup after it boils can trigger sugar crystallisation, leading to a grainy candy. Keeping the sides clean with a wet mop stops stray crystals from seeding the batch, and the cold-water test shows when the syrup has reached the right concentration.
“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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