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 ↓
Butter Ctips
Ingredients
Directions
Make the candy
In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.
Boil the mixture until it hardens in cold water.
Pour the candy into a buttered pan to cool.
Prepare thin rolls of fondant while the candy cools.
Shape and cut
Once the candy is cool enough to handle, pull it until it turns white.
Keep the candy near the fire to keep it pliable.
Form flat strips wide enough to enclose the rolls of fondant.
Encase the rolls in the strips and cut into half‑inch lengths with scissors.
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 sweet candy base that hardens as the syrup cools.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidity that helps prevent crystallization, keeping the candy smooth.
- Thin rolls of fondant
- Forms the soft filling enclosed inside the candy strips.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture until it hardens in cold water. Sugar syrup must reach the correct concentration to set firm when cooled. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes it brittle and hard to pull.
“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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