Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Ginger Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the sugar until it reaches the crack stage.
Add a few drops of essence of ginger just before the syrup reaches the crack stage.
Pour the mixture into boxes without sugaring them.
Allow to cool and harden.
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 + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together14,054 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
- Sugar
- Forms the sweet base that sets hard and brittle as the syrup cools.
- Essence of ginger
- Adds the ginger aroma and flavour to the sugar.
The step that matters
Boil the sugar to the crack stage. At this stage little water remains, so the syrup sets hard and brittle as it cools. Removed too early, the drops stay sticky; left too long, the sugar darkens and tastes bitter.
“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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