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Dessert

Horehound Drops

A herbal drop made from horehound leaves steeped, sweetened with coffee sugar, and flavored with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Horehound Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the horehound tea

  1. Steep the horehound leaves in boiling water for 1 hour.

  2. Place the vessel in hot water, ensuring it does not boil.

  3. Strain and press the leaves dry.

Make the drops

  1. Pour the tea over the sugar and heat until dissolved.

  2. Add vinegar and cook until the mixture breaks when dropped in water.

  3. Pour into a greased pan or slab and cut into pieces or pull into ropes.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Coffee + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Horehound leaves
Supply the bitter, herbal flavour that the steeped tea carries into the candy.
Coffee sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a hard, glassy mass as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallising too readily.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture breaks when dropped in water. Hardness depends on how much water the sugar syrup has lost. Stopping too early leaves a sticky, soft candy, while cooking too long over-concentrates the sugar, making it brittle and prone to scorching and bitterness.

“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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