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Dessert

Peppermint Drops

A sweet syrup of powdered sugar and water or lemon juice flavored with peppermint, dropped onto greased paper to set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and peppermint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,583 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease the inside of a saucepan with a little oil or butter.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and water or lemon juice to the saucepan.

Cook and flavour

  1. Place the saucepan on the fire and boil the syrup for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the essence of peppermint or oil of peppermint.

Shape

  1. Drop the mixture onto white paper greased with butter.

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. Lemon + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Peppermint + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together958 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 loaf sugar
Provides the sweetness and dissolves into the syrup that sets into the drops.
Water or strained lemon juice
Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup that boils down to a firm, shapeable mass.
Essence of peppermint
Gives the drops their characteristic minty aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup for 10 minutes. Boiling drives off water and raises the sugar concentration, so the mixture sets firm when cooled. Too little boiling leaves drops that stay soft or sticky, while overboiling can make them brittle or caramelise.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter. 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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