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Dessert

French Cream Candy

A sweet candy made from egg, cold water, confectioner's sugar, shaped into oblong balls and garnished with walnuts or pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

French Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Break the egg into a bowl and add the cold water.

  2. Mix in confectioner's sugar until stiff enough to shape into oblong balls.

  3. Flavor the mixture to taste.

Finish and dry

  1. Press an English walnut or pecan on each side of the balls.

  2. Lay the candies on a platter to dry.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture together.
Confectioner's sugar
Provides sweetness and body, stiffening the mixture so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Mixing in the confectioner's sugar. Sugar must be added gradually until the mixture is stiff enough to shape. Too little leaves it sticky and hard to form, while too much makes the candy dry and crumbly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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