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 Candies
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the syrup
Combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water in a saucepan.
Cook until the mixture forms a very soft ball when dropped in cold water.
Cool and cream
Cool until it crinkles on top when the dish is tipped.
Stir until it creams, then transfer to a dough board.
Knead with your hands until smooth.
If adding nuts, coconut, or chocolate, mix them in before stirring.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 sugar crystals that give fondant its smooth, soft body, and provides sweetness.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that partly breaks down sucrose, helping keep the crystals fine and the texture smooth.
The step that matters
Cool until it crinkles on top before stirring. Stirring while the syrup is still hot lets sugar crystals form large and grainy. Cooling first keeps the syrup supersaturated so that stirring produces many tiny crystals, giving a smooth, creamy 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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