Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Sugar Drops

A baked drop made with butter, eggs, flour, sugar, nutmeg, and candied plum filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
To Make Sugar Drops

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make Sugar Drops

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Whip the eggs until light.

  2. Add the butter and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Sift in the flour and add the nutmeg; mix lightly.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter a baking tin and drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto it.

  2. Place a candied plum in the center of each drop.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the drops lightness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the drops brown in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the drops together as they bake.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drops and contributes to golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix the flour lightly. Overmixing once the flour is added develops gluten, which makes the drops tough rather than tender. Mixing only until combined keeps the texture light.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

More sugar drops recipes

Barley 9 See all 17 →

You might also like

Mixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes