Name: Licorice Gum Drops
Ingredients: 40 lbs mass licorice; 50 lbs sugar; cottonseed oil

Why it works: Licorice and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 76 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Licorice Gum Drops

Ingredients

40 lbs mass licorice
50 lbs sugar
cottonseed oil

Directions

Mix mass licorice with sugar.
Cook the mixture as directed.
After cooking, handle the mixture carefully.
Coat the gum drops with cottonseed oil instead of sugar after removing from the starch.

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.

Licorice + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together76 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + cottonseedtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Licorice + cottonseedtop 58% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1 recipe

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).