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Dessert

Fondant for Dipping

Fondant for Dipping is a sugar-based confection made by cooking sugar and cream of tartar to the blow stage, then cooling, scraping, and kneading.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Fondant for Dipping

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Dissolve the sugar and cream of tartar in water and cook until it reaches the blow stage.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a clean slab and let it cool completely.

  3. Once cold, scrape the batch together into a mass.

Work and store

  1. Using a cream scraper, work the fondant back and forth until it granulates, becoming very white and short.

  2. Knead the granulated fondant into a soft, putty-like consistency.

  3. Store in a crock covered with damp cloths to keep indefinitely.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the crystals that make up the fondant's smooth, firm body once worked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent large sugar crystals from forming during cooking.

The step that matters

Working the fondant until it granulates. Scraping the cooled mass back and forth breaks it into fine crystals. Too little working leaves it sticky, while the goal is a white, short, smooth texture that holds its shape.

“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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