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Dessert

Lemon Drops

A sweet lemon candy made by dropping a lemon mixture onto paper to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lemon Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon base

  1. Strain the juice of the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Mix the powdered sugar with the lemon juice until thick.

Make the drops

  1. Boil the mixture in a pan for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Drop spoonfuls onto writing paper.

  3. Let the drops cool.

Make the alternative paste

  1. For an alternative, mix 2 ounces of powdered sugar with the grated rind of 3 lemons and flour.

  2. Whisk the egg white until frothy.

  3. Combine the frothy egg white with the other ingredients to form a light paste.

  4. Drop the paste onto writing paper.

  5. Dry the paste before the fire until hard.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Sweetens the drops and thickens with the lemon juice into a workable mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity and flavor, and helps the sugar thicken into a paste.
Egg white
Whisked to froth, it adds lightness and helps the paste hold its shape.
All-purpose flour
Adds body to the alternative paste so it sets firm when dried.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring constantly. Sugar syrup can scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred, giving a bitter taste and dark color. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the mixture thickens without burning.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

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