Skip to main content
Dessert

Violet Drops

A lemon-based candy flavored with violet essence and colored light blue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Mix in the powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the essence of violets and enough Prussian blue food coloring to achieve a light blue color, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  4. Heat the mixture gently over low heat until it thickens, but do not make it too thin.

Shape and store

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

  2. Allow the drops to cool completely.

  3. Store the cooled drops in a paper-lined 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 the juice that gives the candy its tart, acidic flavor.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, helping the mixture set into a firm candy as it thickens.
Essence of violets
Supplies the floral aroma that defines the candy's flavor.

The step that matters

Heating over low heat until it thickens. Heating gently keeps the sugar from scorching or caramelizing. Stopping at the right thickness matters because overcooking makes the drops hard and brittle, while undercooking leaves them too soft to hold their shape as they cool.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes