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Dessert

Everton Ice Cream Candy

A lemon-flavored candy made by boiling sugar, butter, water, and lemon rind, then cooling and pulling to a crisp texture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Everton Ice Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into a cup.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the sugar, butter, and water with half of the lemon rind.

  3. Keep the fire hot and stir the candy continuously.

  4. Test the mixture by dropping a bit into cold water; it should become crisp.

  5. Once done, remove from heat and let it cool slightly before stirring in the lemon juice.

Shape and finish

  1. Butter a dish and pour the mixture in to a thickness of about 1 inch.

  2. When cool, remove the lemon peel and pull the candy until it turns white.

  3. Cut into sticks, checking every 4 inches with a knife.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 bulk of the candy and sets into a brittle, crisp texture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the candy a softer, richer bite and helps it release from the pan.
Lemon
Supplies the juice and rind that give the candy its bright, sharp citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Testing the mixture in cold water. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set crisp; too little cooking leaves it sticky, while overcooking makes it hard and bitter. The cold-water test shows when the syrup is ready.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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