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Dessert

Peppermint Lozenges

A sweet, stiff confection made from gum tragacanth, glucose, lozenge sugar, and peppermint oil, formed into lozenges and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peppermint and potato work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 330 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peppermint Lozenges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gum base

  1. Soak the gum tragacanth in water overnight in a stone bowl.

  2. Mix the glucose into the soaked gum and strain through a sieve into a copper pan.

Make the paste

  1. Add lozenge sugar until a stiff paste forms, then mix in the oil of peppermint.

  2. Knead in more lozenge sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to cut cleanly.

Shape and dry

  1. Dust a marble surface with potato starch and roll out the mixture to 1/8 inch thick.

  2. Dust the top with potato starch and smooth it with your hand.

  3. Cut into lozenges using a cutter and place them on trays dusted with lozenge sugar.

  4. Separate the lozenges and let them dry in a dry room for 1-2 days.

  5. Once dry, shake them in a sieve to remove rough edges.

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. Peppermint + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 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

Gum tragacanth
Swells in water to form a thick, binding gel that gives the lozenges their stiff structure.
Glucose
Adds sweetness and softness, and helps keep the lozenges from becoming brittle.
Lozenge sugar
Stiffens the paste as it is worked in, giving a dry mixture that holds its shape when cut.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the aroma and flavor that defines the lozenges.

The step that matters

Knead in the lozenge sugar until stiff. The mixture must be stiff enough to cut cleanly. Too little sugar leaves it sticky and it will deform when cut, while the drying period depends on the lozenges being firm enough to hold their shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peppermint. 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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