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Dessert

Peppermint Creams

A peppermint-flavored candy made by boiling sugar, water, glucose, and cream of tartar, then cooling, beating, and setting.

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 ↓

Peppermint Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, boiling water, glucose, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it threads, then cool slightly.

Finish and set

  1. Beat the mixture until it begins to thicken.

  2. Flavor with peppermint extract to taste.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto tins and let them set.

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. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and forms the crystalline structure of the creams as it cools and sets.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallisation, helping the creams stay smooth rather than grainy.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, which helps prevent crystallisation and keeps the texture smooth.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it threads. Boiling concentrates the sugar to the right density. Stopping too early leaves the creams soft and sticky, while cooking too far makes them hard and brittle.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe 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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