Skip to main content
Dessert

Geebo or Taffy

Taffy made from sugar, corn syrup, boiling water, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Geebo or Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the sugar into the boiling water.

  2. Add the corn syrup and cream of tartar.

  3. Boil until it threads.

Cool and pull

  1. Cool in buttered pans, folding in the edges as they cool.

  2. When nearly cold, pull over a hook until white and light.

Finish

  1. Cut into strips when cold and wrap in waxed paper.

  2. Add any desired flavor.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that cooks down and sets into sweet, chewy candy.
Corn syrup
Interferes with sugar crystals so the candy stays smooth rather than grainy.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar crystallization and keeps the candy tender.

The step that matters

Boil until it threads. The cooking point sets how much water remains in the syrup. Cooked too little, the taffy stays soft and sticky; cooked too long, it turns hard and brittle once cool.

“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.

More taffy recipes

Molasses 41Butter 29Vanilla 22White 19Cream 18Coconut 15 See all 27 →

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes