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Transparent Peppermint Drops

A confection made from sugar, water, and peppermint oil, boiled and dropped onto sheets to cool.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Transparent Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the sugar through a fine sieve.

  2. Add enough water to wet the sugar without overdoing it.

  3. Stir in the oil of peppermint.

Cook and shape

  1. Fill a copper ladle more than half full and hold it over a clear fire until it boils for 1–2 minutes.

  2. Using a stick that fits the spout, push drops onto clean sheet tins.

  3. Let them cool until they easily come off.

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 + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Triple refined sugar
Forms the sweet, crisp body of the drops as it cooks and hardens.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled evenly into a syrup.
Oil of peppermint
Gives the drops their characteristic minty aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup for 1–2 minutes. Boiling drives off water and raises the sugar concentration. Too little boiling leaves drops soft and sticky, while too much can over-darken or harden them too much to shape well.

“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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