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Dessert

Cinnamon Dragees, Common

A sweet confection made from a paste of gum dragon, sugar, cinnamon, and flour, rolled, dried, and coated with sugar.

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 dragon in enough water to cover it overnight.

  2. The next day, stir the infusion in a mortar with a pestle until it becomes white.

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

  4. Gradually mix in the flour, moistening with water until the paste is the right consistency.

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

  6. Cut into slips the same size as cinnamon sticks.

Dry and coat

  1. Place on paper or a sieve in a warm place for several days to dry.

  2. Boil sugar to a syrup and coat the slips of paste.

  3. For the last two layers, use powdered sugar for whiteness.

  4. Allow to dry on sieves for a few days before curling and coloring.

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 a sticky, binding base that holds the paste together.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, white finish on the outer layers.
Flour
Provides bulk so the paste can be rolled and cut into firm slips.
Caked sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the paste.

The step that matters

Drying the slips before coating. The slips must dry fully in a warm place so they hold their shape. Moisture left in the paste can soften or crack the dough and cause the syrup coating to fail.

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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