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Peppermint Drops

A sweet lemon and peppermint candy made by heating sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 mixture

  1. Squeeze the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Sift powdered sugar into the lemon juice until it reaches a proper thickness.

  3. Add oil of peppermint to the mixture to taste.

  4. Place the mixture in a saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.

Shape and store

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto writing paper using a knife, ensuring they are the same size.

  2. Let them cool until they can be easily removed.

  3. Store in a papered box.

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

Lemons
Lemon juice supplies the liquid base and a sharp, acidic flavour that balances the sugar.
Powdered sugar
Sugar thickens the juice into a paste that sets firm as it cools, and adds sweetness.
Oil of peppermint
Concentrated peppermint oil provides the main aroma and flavour of the drops.

The step that matters

Heating over low heat while stirring. Low heat with constant stirring warms the sugar mixture evenly without scorching it. Overheating can caramelise or burn the sugar, giving a bitter taste and a darker colour.

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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