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Dessert

Wild Cherry

A hard candy made from sugar, cream of tartar, and wild cherry extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Wild Cherry

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the syrup

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

  2. Add water to dissolve and cook over medium heat until it reaches the hard crack stage (300°F/150°C).

Flavor and set

  1. Remove from heat and stir in wild cherry extract.

  2. Shake the mixture and pour it onto a slab.

  3. Allow it to cool and finish 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. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

  3. Cream + cherrytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy's glassy, hard structure as the syrup cooks and cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Wild cherry extract
Provides the cherry aroma and flavor that defines the candy.

The step that matters

Cooking to the hard crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach about 300°F/150°C to set hard when cooled. Stopping early leaves a sticky or chewy candy, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and give it a bitter taste.

Swap the cherry

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

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

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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