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Dessert

Magnet Salt Water Taffy

A sweet taffy made with sugar, water, salt, cream of tartar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Magnet Salt Water Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine the sugar, cream of tartar, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the hard crack stage.

Pull and flavor

  1. Pour the hot mixture onto a well-greased platter or marble slab.

  2. Add the salt and pull the taffy on a hook or large nail.

  3. Flavor the taffy with strawberry or vanilla as desired.

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

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

  2. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy base, and cooking it to hard crack sets the taffy's firm chewy texture.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing, keeping the taffy smooth.
Strawberry or vanilla flavoring
Adds the flavor and aroma that define the finished taffy.

The step that matters

Boiling to the hard crack stage. Sugar syrup hardens as its water boils off and its temperature rises. Stopping early leaves the taffy soft and sticky, while going too far makes it brittle or scorched.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberrythe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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