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Cinnamon Dragees, Common

A sweet confection made from gum dragée, sugar, cinnamon, and flour, shaped into strips and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cinnamon Dragees, Common

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Infuse the gum dragée in enough water to cover it overnight.

  2. The next day, pour the infusion into a mortar and stir well with a pestle for about 15 minutes.

  3. Add the caked sugar, powdered sugar, and ground cinnamon gradually.

  4. Mix in 2 to 3 pounds of flour, moistening with water until the paste reaches the right consistency.

  5. Knead the paste briefly, then roll it out to ⅛ inch thick.

Shape and dry

  1. Cut the rolled paste into strips the same size as cinnamon sticks.

  2. Place the strips on paper or a sieve in a warm place for several days to dry.

Coat and finish

  1. Boil common sugar to a pearl stage and coat the strips with it.

  2. For the last two layers, use fine powder to achieve whiteness.

  3. Once dried, the dragees can be curled and colored like coriander seeds.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Gum dragon
Swells in water to form the binding base that holds the paste together.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine texture to the paste and coating.
Flour
Provides structure so the paste can be rolled and cut into firm strips.
Ground cinnamon
Gives the dragees their aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Drying the strips. The strips must dry fully in a warm place over several days; if moisture remains, the paste can soften, mold, or lose its shape.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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.

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