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 Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine the cream of tartar, sugar, and cold water in a saucepan.
Cook over medium heat until it spins a thread.
Cool and work the fondant
Pour the mixture onto a lightly greased platter.
Let it sit until a thin skin forms on top.
Rub briskly with the back of a spoon until it becomes white and thick.
Finish and use
Transfer to a double boiler and stir constantly over lukewarm water until thin enough to spread.
Add the flavoring and use immediately.
If too stiff, add lukewarm water a drop at a time until softened.
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 crystal structure of the icing, giving it its body once worked.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the icing smooth.
- Cold water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a syrup.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cooled syrup until white and thick. Stirring the cooled syrup encourages many tiny sugar crystals to form at once, which turns it opaque and creamy. If it is worked too early, while still hot, or not enough, the fondant stays glossy, runny, or grainy.
“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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