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Dessert

Fondant for French Cream Candy

Fondant for French cream candy is a confection made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar to a ball stage, then cooling and molding.

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 ↓

Fondant for French Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a granite pan; stir until dissolved.

  2. Place the pan over high heat and cover; boil until the mixture can be blown into a hair from a straw or spoon, or rolled into a soft ball.

Make the fondant

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish and watch for a scum to form.

  2. Using a wooden paddle or spoon, beat the mixture until creamy.

  3. Transfer to a marble slab or board and mold to the desired consistency.

  4. Add nuts, fruits, or flavors 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the crystal structure of the fondant when it is cooked and then beaten.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent large sugar crystals from forming.

The step that matters

Beating the cooled mixture until creamy. Beating must happen only after the syrup has cooled to the right point. Agitating it too early or while hot makes large crystals form, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth fondant.

“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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