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Dessert

Acid Drops

A hard candy made from boiled sugar, water, cream of tartar, lemon essence, and tartaric acid, rolled and powdered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Acid Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it reaches the caramel stage.

  2. Add a few drops of lemon essence.

  3. Pour the mixture onto an oiled marble slab.

  4. Sprinkle powdered tartaric acid on top and work it in.

Shape the drops

  1. Oil a tin sheet.

  2. Place the sugar on the tin sheet in a warm area.

  3. Cut a small piece and roll it into a round pipe.

  4. Cut the pipe into small pieces the size of drops using scissors.

  5. Roll the pieces under your hand and mix with fine powdered sugar.

  6. Sift the drops from the sugar and store them in boxes for later use.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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

Loaf sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a hard, glassy structure as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallisation so the candy stays smooth.
Powdered tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, sour bite that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Taking the sugar to the caramel stage. Sugar must be cooked to the right temperature to set hard when cooled. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and will not hold its shape, while overcooked syrup darkens and tastes bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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