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Dessert

Stick Candy

A homemade candy made by boiling sugar, corn syrup, and water, then pulling and coloring the taffy.

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

Stick Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Pour boiling water into an aluminum or granite kettle.

  2. Add corn syrup and stir until dissolved.

  3. Pour sugar into the center of the kettle, one cup at a time, stirring gently after each addition.

  4. Boil rapidly until it snaps when poured into cold water.

Make the taffy

  1. Pour into a buttered pan and cool quickly.

  2. Fold the edges into the center of the hot taffy before it hardens, pressing down each time.

  3. Reserve two bunches of warm taffy, about the size of a hen egg.

  4. Color one pink and the other yellow using food coloring.

  5. Fold in the coloring without pulling it.

  6. Pull the remainder of the taffy very light and roll it into a smooth roll about the size of a rolling pin.

Form the stick candy

  1. Divide each colored ball in halves and roll them to the size of a lead pencil.

  2. Lay the colored strips alternately on the white roll.

  3. Roll, twist, and pull the strips as they get too long to handle, cutting them into two-foot strips.

  4. Have a helper pull and twist them to the desired size quickly.

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

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

  2. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides the main sweetness and forms the hard, brittle candy structure as it cooks.
Corn syrup
Keeps the sugar from crystallizing so the candy stays smooth and glassy.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy smooth.
Corn starch
Helps thicken and stabilize the candy mass, giving it a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly until it snaps when poured into cold water.. Sugar must reach the hard-crack stage to set firm and brittle. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and brown.

“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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