Name: French Cream Candy
Ingredients: 2 egg whites; ½ cup water; Confectioner's Sugar (to taste); Flavoring (such as vanilla or others); Oiled paper or buttered paper (for drying)

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

French Cream Candy

Ingredients

2 egg whites
½ cup water
Confectioner's Sugar (to taste)
Flavoring (such as vanilla or others)
Oiled paper or buttered paper (for drying)

Directions

In two glasses of the same size, place the egg whites in one glass and the water in the other.
Pour both into a dish and stir in confectioner's sugar with a silver fork until the mixture is thick enough to mold with your fingers. Add flavoring to suit your taste.
Lay the candy on oiled or buttered paper 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.

Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg whites: Whipped proteins that help the sugar mixture set into a moldable, creamy structure.
Confectioner's sugar: Dissolves into the liquid to add sweetness and thicken the mixture into a moldable paste.

“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.