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Dessert

Lemon Drops

A hard candy made from clarified syrup and lemon juice, dropped onto greased paper to cool.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Heat the clarified syrup until it reaches the hard crack stage when dropped in water.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice.

Shape and cool

  1. Drop small amounts onto buttered paper.

  2. Allow to cool completely.

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

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

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified syrup
Sugar base that sets firm and glassy as it cools, giving the drops their body and sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Heating the syrup to hard crack stage. Hard crack depends on how far the sugar concentration has been driven. Stopping early leaves the drops sticky and soft, while overheating turns the sugar bitter or burnt. Watching the stage closely determines whether the drops set hard and clean.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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