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Dessert

Ice Cream Confectionery

A hard candy made from sugar, water, butter, cream of tartar, and vanilla or lemon oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ice Cream Confectionery

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 285°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 7 lbs of loaf sugar with 3 pints of water.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in 1 lb of fresh butter and allow to froth up.

  4. Boil the mixture to a weak crack stage (285°F or 140°C).

  5. Pour the syrup onto a greased slab.

Pull and shape

  1. Once it begins to cool, knead until stiff enough to pull over a hook.

  2. Pull the mixture until it turns white, flavoring with vanilla or oil of lemon.

  3. Shape into bars or leave in a heap for breaking into pieces.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a hard, brittle glass as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising, keeping the candy smooth.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture slightly and contributing to the froth.

The step that matters

Boiling to a weak crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set hard when cooled. Too low leaves a sticky candy, while going too far makes it brittle and prone to burning.

“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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