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Clove Sticks

Clove Sticks are a candied sugar confection flavored with cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 474 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Clove Sticks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sugar base

  1. Boil the sugar, glucose, and water until it reaches 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pour the mixture onto an oiled slab.

Add the color and stripes

  1. Cut off a small portion and divide it into two.

  2. Color one portion deep red.

  3. Pull both portions into stripes and lay them alternately on the solid sugar.

Shape and cut

  1. Form the mixture into a roll, bringing one end to a point.

  2. Pull out into long lengths and twist.

  3. When cold, snip with scissors to the desired size.

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. Cherry + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 glassy, hard structure of the candy as it cools.
Glucose
Inhibits crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and clear rather than grainy.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled to the target temperature.

The step that matters

Boiling to 300°F (150°C). This is the hard-crack stage, where the sugar has little water left. Stopping early leaves a sticky, soft candy that will not hold its shape, while overheating can scorch the sugar and give a bitter taste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cherry):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cherry. 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.

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