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 ↓
Glace Chestnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chestnuts
Boil and shell the chestnuts.
Remove the brown skin from the nuts.
Make and dip
Make a syrup by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it reaches the 'crack' stage.
Set the syrup vessel in hot water.
Dip the dry nuts into the syrup using a fork.
Place the nuts on greased paper and dip again if needed.
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 + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that hardens into a crisp, glossy coating as it cools.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds a little acid that helps keep the syrup smooth by preventing sugar crystals from forming.
The step that matters
Cooking the syrup to the crack stage. The syrup's final temperature decides how hard the coating becomes once cool. Stopping short leaves a sticky coating, while overcooking makes it bitter or darkens it, so the syrup must reach the crack stage.
“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 Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.