Name: Hard Candy Drops
Ingredients: 5 pounds of sugar; 1½ pints of water; 2 pounds of glucose; flavoring of choice

Hard Candy Drops

Ingredients

5 pounds of sugar
1½ pints of water
2 pounds of glucose
flavoring of choice

Directions

Make the syrup

Mix sugar, water, and glucose in a pot. Stir until dissolved.
Boil the mixture to 290°F in winter (300°F in summer).

Shape and cut

Pour onto a greased slab.
Fold in the corners and let cool.
Run through a drop cutter or roll into sticks and cut into small drops with shears.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Forms the hard, glassy body of the candy and supplies its sweetness.
Glucose: Interferes with sugar crystal formation, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Boil to 290°F in winter or 300°F in summer. The final temperature sets how much water remains in the sugar. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while going too far makes it brittle and prone to scorching. Seasonal humidity is why the target changes.

“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.