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Dessert

Peppermint Drops, or Squares

A hard candy made from sugar, cream of tartar, peppermint flavoring, and red food coloring.

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 ↓

Peppermint Drops, or Squares

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Cook 2 pounds of sugar with 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar until it reaches the hard crack stage.

  2. Remove from heat and flavor with peppermint.

  3. Pull the mixture until it turns white, leaving 2 pounds on the slab.

Color and shape

  1. Color the remaining mixture red and add it for stripes.

  2. Finish the drops or squares as you would with clove drops.

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
Forms the candy base that hardens into a brittle, glassy structure as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the sugar syrup, helping prevent crystallization for a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Pulling the mixture until it turns white. Pulling incorporates air and cools the sugar so it crystallizes into an opaque, tender candy rather than a clear, glassy one. Stopping too early or too late changes the texture.

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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