Why it works: Cinnamon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Cinnamon Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Mix the cinnamon or oil of cinnamon with the powdered sugar and water.
Boil the mixture until it reaches a candy height or snaps in cold water, about 15 minutes.
Shape the drops
Spread the syrup on a well-oiled flat dish and score it into small squares before it hardens.
Alternatively, drop the mixture evenly onto paper.
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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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cinnamon and sugar 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
- Powdered sugar
- Provides sweetness and, when boiled, forms the hard candy structure as it cools.
- Powdered cinnamon
- Supplies the main cinnamon flavour and aroma to the candy.
The step that matters
Boil to candy height. Sugar syrup hardens as its concentration rises during boiling. Stopping too early leaves the drops sticky and soft, while boiling too long makes them brittle and can scorch the sugar, giving a bitter taste.
“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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