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To Make Lemon Drops Another Way

Lemon Drops are hard candies made from sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Make Lemon Drops Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the paste

  1. Place the sugar in a plate.

  2. Squeeze the lemons over the sugar and mix until it forms a thick paste.

Dry the drops

  1. Cover a sheet of paper with drops the size of a coin.

  2. Place the paper in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the drops are completely dry.

  3. Remove the drops from the paper.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Forms the bulk of the drops and sets into a crisp, dry candy as it dries.
Lemons
Their juice moistens the sugar into a paste and adds sharp, acidic flavor.

The step that matters

Drying the drops until completely dry. Sugar pastes stay tacky if they are under-dried, so the drops may stick to the paper or soften. Drying slowly at low heat lets moisture leave without the sugar browning, which keeps the drops pale and crisp.

“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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