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Dessert

Cream Mints

A mint‑flavored candy made by boiling sugar and water, adding cream of tartar, and folding in beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Mints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water.

Finish and shape

  1. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg white while mixing.

  2. Add mint flavoring to taste.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto wax 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + minttop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together907 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, set candy structure as the syrup cooks and cools.
Egg white
Whipped foam that gives the mints a light, airy texture.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth and prevents crystallizing.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to soft ball stage. Syrup cooked too little stays sticky and soft, while overcooking makes mints hard and brittle. Reaching the right temperature controls the final texture, so check with a cold-water test.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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