Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugar Tablet

A candy made by dissolving sugar in water, adding butter, and cooling into a solid tablet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Sugar Tablet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the butter and heat gently, avoiding boiling too high.

  3. Test for consistency; when it resembles soft putty, remove from heat.

Flavour and grain

  1. Add flavoring or essence according to taste.

  2. If using ground ginger, dissolve a small amount in a little water first.

  3. Stir the mixture quickly with a spoon.

  4. Scrape off the solidified edges repeatedly and keep stirring until the mass is sufficiently grained.

  5. Pour the mixture onto a buttered slab.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the tablet and, as it recrystallises, sets it into a firm, grainy mass.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives a richer mouthfeel to the set tablet.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated evenly into a syrup before cooling.

The step that matters

Removing the mixture from heat at the soft putty stage. Heating too far makes the sugar set hard and brittle, while stopping too early leaves it too soft to hold its shape. Gentle heat and a consistency test help control the sugar's concentration.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes