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Dessert

Clove Drops

Clove Drops are a hard candy made from sugar, cream of tartar, water, green food coloring, and clove flavoring.

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 ↓

Clove Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, cream of tartar, and water.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it reaches 320°F (160°C).

Shape the drops

  1. Pour the cooked mixture onto a slab.

  2. Add green food coloring and clove flavoring, then knead the mixture until well combined.

  3. When the mixture is nearly cool, run it through drop or tablet rollers.

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 + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Cream + clovetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 all the sweetness once cooked to temperature.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallization so the candy stays smooth.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated evenly into a clear syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking to 320°F (160°C). Sugar syrup sets into hard candy only when enough water has boiled off. Stopping short leaves a soft, sticky result, while overcooking makes it brittle and prone to browning.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe 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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