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Dessert

Best Peppermint Drops

A confection made by boiling sugar with water, lemon juice, and peppermint oil, then dropping onto plates to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Best Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a bowl, combine the spring water and lemon juice.

  2. In a deep copper drop pan, mix a little of the water mixture into the sugar to form a paste that can drop from a spoon.

  3. Place the pan over a clear fire and stir until it just boils.

Flavor and drop

  1. Remove from heat and add the oil of peppermint and more sugar to achieve the right consistency. Add color as desired when mixing in the oil of peppermint.

  2. Warm the mixture again without boiling.

  3. Drop small amounts onto tin or pewter plates.

Dry and finish

  1. Allow to cool, then transfer to sheets of paper or sieves.

  2. Place in an oven to dry.

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

Fine loaf sugar
Forms the bulk of the drops and sets into a firm, hard candy as it cools.
Spring water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a syrup without grainy crystals.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from recrystallizing.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the main aroma and flavor of the drops.

The step that matters

Warm again without boiling. Reheating the mixture only gently keeps it fluid enough to drop cleanly. Boiling again would overcook the sugar, making the drops harder and more brittle than intended.

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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