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 ↓
Peppermint Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil sugar and water together for 3 minutes.
Add peppermint extract and remove from heat.
Shape the drops
Stir vigorously until the mixture becomes creamy.
Mold with your hands or drop from a teaspoon onto a surface.
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.
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Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Granulated sugar
- Provides sweetness and, once boiled and cooled, sets into the firm, solid body of the drops.
- Peppermint extract
- Adds the minty aroma and flavour that defines the candy.
The step that matters
Stirring until creamy. As the boiled sugar cools, stirring encourages it to form many tiny crystals, which turns the clear syrup opaque and creamy. Stirring too little leaves it glassy and sticky, while stirring past the point of thickening can make it set too hard to shape.
“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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