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Dessert

Cream Candy

A brittle candy made from sugar, vinegar, lemon extract, cream of tartar, and buttered plates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cream Candy

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Moisten the sugar with a little water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle.

  3. Add the lemon extract and cream of tartar, then quickly pour it onto buttered plates.

Pull and cut

  1. Once cool, pull the candy until it turns white and cut it into squares.

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.

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.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 its concentration rises during boiling.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent the sugar from forming large crystals, keeping the candy smooth.
Vinegar
Acid that softens the candy's texture by partly breaking down the sugar.
Lemon extract
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the candy.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle. The sugar must reach a high enough concentration to set hard when cooled. Stopping too early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and give it a bitter taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cream, 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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