Skip to main content
Dessert

Molasses Mint Deops

Molasses Mint Deops is a hard candy made from sugar, molasses, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Molasses Mint Deops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water with cream of tartar or glucose.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the molasses and cook until it reaches a hard crack stage.

Pull and shape

  1. Pour the mixture onto a surface to cool.

  2. When cool enough, pull the candy until it turns a bright golden color.

  3. Form it into a roll and stripe with the clear piece.

  4. Spin out the candy and mark with a caramel marker.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + molassestop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the base of the candy and sets firm as the syrup cools.
New orleans molasses
Adds deep flavor and color, and gives the candy its golden tone when pulled.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystal formation, keeping the candy smooth and clear.

The step that matters

Cooking to hard crack stage. Cooking the syrup to hard crack stage sets the final firmness of the candy. Undercooked syrup stays soft and sticky, while overcooked syrup can turn bitter or burnt.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes