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Dessert

Peppermint Deops

A peppermint candy made by boiling sugar with water, adding cream of tartar and peppermint oil, then dropping onto paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Peppermint Deops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Moisten the sugar with boiling water and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add cream of tartar; mix well.

  3. Add oil of peppermint and beat briskly until the mixture whitens.

  4. Quickly drop the mixture onto white paper.

  5. If the mixture separates before all is dropped, add a little water and boil for 1-2 more minutes.

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).

  2. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that cools and sets into a firm, sweet drop.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth rather than grainy as it cooks and cools.
Oil of peppermint
Gives the drops their strong peppermint aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Dropping the mixture quickly after beating. As the sugar cools it thickens and turns opaque, then hardens. If it sets before it is dropped, the drops will be lumpy and hard to shape, so work quickly once it whitens.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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