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Dessert

Boiled Sugar

A candy made by boiling sugar with water, butter, vinegar or lemon juice, then flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the sugar and water, wetting the sugar well.

  2. Add the butter and place the kettle over high heat.

Boil and test

  1. Boil for 5 minutes after it starts boiling.

  2. Stir in the vinegar or lemon juice and continue boiling until it ropes.

  3. Test by spooning some; if it cools quickly and thickens, it's done.

Finish and pull

  1. Remove from heat and stir in lemon or vanilla extract to taste.

  2. Pour onto buttered dishes and pull while warm.

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

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a firm, glassy texture as it cooks.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the candy smooth.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives a richer, rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Judging when the syrup is done. Sugar syrup keeps darkening and hardening as its temperature rises, so stopping at the wrong point changes the texture. Testing by spooning a little and watching how it cools shows whether it has reached the right stage.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vinegar. 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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