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Dessert

Lemon Drops, or Squares

A hard candy made from sugar, water, tartaric acid, cream of tartar, and lemon oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Drops, or Squares

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a large pot.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture reaches 300°F (150°C).

Shape the drops

  1. Pour the hot mixture onto a slab and let it cool until safe to handle.

  2. Add cream of tartar, tartaric acid, and a few drops of lemon oil.

  3. Knead the mixture until it is cool.

  4. Roll the kneaded mixture out thinly and cut it into squares using a caramel cutter.

  5. Once cooled, break the squares apart.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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 hard candy base and provides the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the sugar syrup, helping keep the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp sourness that brightens the lemon flavour.
Lemon oil
Supplies the aroma and lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 300°F (150°C). At this temperature the sugar reaches the hard-crack stage, so the candy sets firm and brittle when cooled. Undercooking leaves it sticky and soft, while overcooking can scorch it and give a bitter taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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