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Dessert

Violet Drops

A sweet confection made from lemon juice, powdered sugar, violet essence, and blue coloring, formed into drops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Violet Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and mix until well combined.

  3. Stir in the essence of violets and enough Prussian blue to achieve a fine blue color, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  4. Heat the mixture gently over the fire until it thickens, but do not let it become too thin.

Shape and store

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto paper using a knife.

  2. Allow the drops to cool completely.

  3. Store the cooled drops in a papered box.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Provide acidity and fresh citrus flavor that balances the sweetness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and body, helping the mixture set into drops as it thickens.
Essence of violets
Supplies the floral aroma that defines the flavor of the drops.
Prussian blue
Provides the blue color; it does not contribute flavor.

The step that matters

Heating over the fire. Heat thickens the sugar mixture by driving off water and concentrating the sugar. Heating gently and stopping at the right thickness matters, because overheating can make the sugar set too hard, while too little heat leaves drops that spread and stay sticky.

“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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