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Peppermint Drops

A sweet confection made by boiling sugar and water with peppermint oil, then dropping the syrup onto plates to cool.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the lemon juice and spring water in a pot.

  2. Mix a small amount of water with enough sugar to form a thick paste that holds its shape when dropped from a spoon.

  3. Place the mixture in a deep copper pan with a spout and heat it on the stove, stirring constantly until it just boils.

  4. Add oil of peppermint to flavor and a little more sugar, ensuring the mixture remains pourable.

Drop and dry

  1. Chalk the spout of the pan.

  2. Drop small amounts onto tin or pewter plates.

  3. Allow the drops to cool.

  4. Transfer the drops to sieves and let them dry in a warm place.

Store

  1. Store the dried drops in canisters or boxes in a dry location.

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

Refined sugar
Forms the bulk of the drops and sets into a firm, crisp candy as it dries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the sugar from crystallizing.
Spring water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a smooth, pourable syrup.

The step that matters

Heating until it just boils. Stirring constantly keeps sugar from scorching or crystallizing on the pan, and stopping at a boil keeps the syrup pourable so the drops form cleanly.

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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