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Dessert

Cream Mints

A peppermint‑flavored candy made by cooking sugar and glucose, pulling the mixture, forming sticks, cutting into pieces, and dusting with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and peppermint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,082 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Mints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mint base

  1. Combine 8 pounds of sugar, 1½ pounds of glucose, and enough water to dissolve the sugar in a kettle.

  2. Cook the mixture to 264°F (129°C).

  3. Pour the cooked mixture onto a slab.

  4. Sprinkle ¼ pound of powdered sugar over the slab.

  5. Knead the mixture well.

Pull and shape

  1. Pull the mixture on a hook, adding oil of peppermint for flavor while pulling.

  2. Once well pulled, place the mixture on a spinning table.

  3. Form the pulled mixture into sticks.

  4. Cut the sticks into small pieces the size of a pecan using shears.

Finish and pan

  1. Lay the pieces in powdered sugar.

  2. Sift off the excess sugar.

  3. Place the pieces in pans.

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 + 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 crystalline body of the mint, giving it its firm, sweet structure.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystallization, keeping the mint smooth and tender rather than grainy.
Powdered sugar
Dusted on the slab and pieces to keep the pulled mass from sticking to surfaces and hands.
Oil of peppermint
Supplies the mint aroma and flavor, added during pulling so it spreads evenly through the mass.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture to 264°F (129°C). The final temperature sets how much water remains in the sugar syrup, which controls how firm or soft the mints become once cooled and pulled. Undercooking leaves them sticky; overcooking makes them brittle.

“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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