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Dessert

Best Peppermint Drops

A hard candy made from sugar, water, lemon juice, and peppermint oil.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

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 thick enough to 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 thicken the mixture.

  2. Warm the mixture again without boiling.

  3. Drop small amounts onto tin or pewter plates.

  4. Color as desired when adding the oil of peppermint.

Dry

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

  2. Place in a 300°F (150°C) 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

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the drops and sets into a hard, glassy candy as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing.
Spring water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated into a syrup without scorching.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the aroma and flavor that defines the drops.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture again without boiling. Reboiling after the peppermint and extra sugar are added can over-thicken or scorch the sugar, making the drops hard to shape and giving them a burnt taste.

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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