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Dessert

LA Tire, or London Candy

A sweet candy made from treacle, spices, and lemon, shaped into sticks and wrapped in paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

LA Tire, or London Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease the bottom and sides of a brass pan with fresh butter.

Make the candy

  1. Boil the treacle with cinnamon, ginger, lemon peel, and juice in the pan.

  2. Stir continuously while boiling for about 10 minutes.

  3. Drop a little mixture onto a buttered plate; if it hardens, pour the rest onto buttered plates.

  4. Once cool enough to handle, pull the mixture using a machine or buttered hands.

  5. Work the mixture until it hardens and turns light in color.

Shape and wrap

  1. Quickly pull it into small sticks and cut with a buttered knife on a floured surface.

  2. Prepare narrow strips of paper to twist around the sticks as they are cut.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Provides the main body and deep sweetness of the candy.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness of the treacle.
Ginger
Adds a warm, sharp aroma and spiciness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and sweetness to the candy.

The step that matters

Testing the boiled mixture on a plate. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set firm when cooled; a small test drop shows whether it hardens. Pouring too early leaves a sticky candy, while boiling too long can make it brittle and hard to pull.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, ginger, rum, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, ginger, rum, butter, flour. 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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