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Dessert

Divinity Candy

A hard candy made with sugar, corn syrup, water, egg whites, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Divinity Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrups

  1. In one pan, combine 3 cups of sugar, corn syrup, and 1 cup of water.

  2. In another pan, combine ½ cup of sugar and enough water to cook.

  3. While these two mixtures are cooking, beat the egg whites until stiff.

Combine and finish

  1. Once the sugar mixture is almost hard enough to break, pour a little over the egg whites while beating.

  2. Follow with the larger batch and continue beating until stiff.

  3. Just before turning out, stir in the nuts.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Corn + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, when cooked to a syrup, forms the candy's firm structure.
Corn syrup
Interferes with sugar crystallization, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the candy its light, airy texture.
Nuts
Add crunch and texture to the set candy.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup over the egg whites at the right moment. The syrup must be nearly hard-crack stage so it sets firm as it is beaten in. Pouring too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while pouring too late can make it set before it blends into the whites.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, egg. 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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