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Dessert

French Cream Candy

A confection made by beating egg whites, adding cream or milk, flavoring, and folding in confectioners' sugar until stiff enough to mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

French Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add an equal amount of cream, milk, or cold water.

  3. Flavor the mixture as desired.

  4. Stir in sifted confectioners' sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold into shape.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 into a foam that gives the candy its light, airy structure.
Cream, milk, or cold water
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture.
Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens the candy and firms the mixture as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold. Confectioners' sugar absorbs liquid and thickens the mixture. Adding it gradually and stopping when the candy holds its shape prevents a mixture that is sticky if too soft or dry and crumbly if too stiff.

“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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