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Peppermint Drops

A lemon and powdered sugar candy flavored with peppermint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and peppermint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,583 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Squeeze the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Sift the powdered sugar through a fine sieve and mix it with the lemon juice.

  3. Add the essence of peppermint and mix well until thick.

Cook and set

  1. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and heat over low fire, stirring with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.

  2. Drop spoonfuls onto writing paper, allowing them to cool until firm.

  3. Store the 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 + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the mixture into a workable paste as it dissolves in the juice.
Lemons
Supply acidity and liquid, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Heating over low fire while stirring. Gentle heat helps the sugar mixture warm and thicken without scorching, and constant stirring prevents sticking and uneven heating. Overheating can make the drops brittle or burnt-tasting.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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