Skip to main content
Dessert

Divinity Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, corn syrup, water, egg white, flavoring, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan.

  2. Fill the corn syrup measuring cup with water and pour it over the sugar.

  3. Cook the mixture until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

Whip and set

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg white.

  2. Stir in flavoring and nuts.

  3. Beat the mixture until thick.

  4. Spread on a greased plate to cool.

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

Sugar
Forms the sweet candy base and sets firm as the syrup concentrates and cools.
Corn syrup
Interferes with sugar crystals, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Egg white
Whipped with hot syrup, it traps air and gives the candy its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to soft ball stage. Reaching the soft ball stage means enough water has boiled off to concentrate the sugar. Stopping early leaves a runny candy that will not set, while cooking too long makes it hard and grainy.

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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes