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 ↓
Cream Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.
Dissolve the sugar over medium heat.
Cook and set
Boil the mixture without stirring until it reaches a brittle stage.
Just before it is done, add the cream of tartar and flavor to taste.
Pour the mixture into buttered pans and let it cool until it is safe to handle.
Shape
Stretch the candy until it becomes perfectly white, then cut it into your preferred shapes.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- White sugar
- Forms the candy's structure and sweetness as it cooks into a brittle sugar mass.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallization so the candy stays smooth.
The step that matters
Boil without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger crystal formation, making the candy grainy instead of smooth. Sugar must also be fully dissolved first, since leftover crystals seed further crystallization.
“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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