Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cream Peppermints

A candy made from sugar, water, vinegar, chocolate, and peppermint oil, formed into balls and coated in chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and peppermint work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 769 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream Peppermints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and cold water. Cook without stirring until it reaches a brittle stage.

  2. Add vinegar and stir just before it is done.

  3. Remove from heat and flavor with oil of peppermint.

Shape and coat

  1. Stir until the mixture is stiff enough to mold into balls, using powdered sugar on your hands.

  2. Melt the chocolate and dip the balls, using a long pin to hold them.

  3. Place the dipped balls on paraffin paper to cool.

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. Vinegar + pepperminttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together769 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + pepperminttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + chocolatetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the sugar syrup that cooks into the firm, brittle candy base.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth and prevents crystallization.
Chocolate
Forms the coating that gives the peppermint centers a rich outer layer.

The step that matters

Cook without stirring to the brittle stage. Stirring a sugar syrup as it cooks can trigger crystallization, leaving a grainy texture. Cooking it undisturbed to the correct temperature sets the candy's firmness, so the mixture can later be molded into balls.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintthe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, chocolate. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes