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Dessert

Ginger Tablets, or Drops

A candy made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, and ginger extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Ginger Tablets, or Drops

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 310°F (154°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

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

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it reaches 310°F (154°C).

Shape the tablets

  1. Pour the hot mixture onto a slab and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add ginger extract to the mixture and knead until stiff.

  3. Once completely cool, run the mixture 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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 bulk of the tablets and sets firm as the mixture cools and hardens.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking to 310°F (154°C). The syrup must reach this temperature to have enough sugar concentration to set firm once cooled. Stopping early leaves tablets soft or sticky, while overcooking makes them brittle.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

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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