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Dessert

Peppermint Candy

A hard candy made from clarified sugar, egg white, fine sifted sugar, and peppermint oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Peppermint Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Boil clarified sugar in a deep copper pan until it reaches a nearly barley sugar consistency.

  2. Mix egg white with fine sifted sugar and add peppermint oil to taste.

  3. Stir in the egg mixture quickly until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture onto sifted sugar spread on paper.

Finish and store

  1. When cool, break into pieces and store in canisters or drawers.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + pepperminttop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together850 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Cooked to a barley sugar consistency, it forms the hard, glassy body of the candy.
Egg white
Whisked with fine sugar and stirred in, it adds a light texture and helps the mixture set.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the characteristic peppermint aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg mixture quickly. Once the cooked sugar begins to cool and thicken, it sets quickly. Fast, thorough stirring keeps the egg mixture evenly distributed before the candy firms up and becomes uneven.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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