Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Spun Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil sugar, water, and cream of tartar together until it reaches the hard crack stage (about 300°F or 150°C).
Remove from heat and place the pan in hot water.
Spin and gather
Oil a cane or stick and hold it horizontally over a large sheet of paper on the floor.
Dip a fork (or two forks tied back to back) into the syrup and splash it briskly over the stick to create long threads of sugar.
Gather the spun sugar threads for garnishing sweets and cakes.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Forms the structure of the threads as the syrup cools and hardens.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidity that helps keep the syrup smooth by discouraging crystallization.
The step that matters
Boiling to the hard crack stage. Syrup must reach the hard crack stage, around 300°F or 150°C, so that it sets into brittle, strong threads. Stopping early leaves threads that are soft, sticky, or fail to hold their shape.
“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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