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Dessert

Lemon Drops

A small candy made from clarified syrup flavored with lemon, 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

Cook the syrup

  1. Boil the clarified syrup until it cracks when dropped in water.

  2. Flavor the syrup with lemon.

Drop and cool

  1. Pour the syrup in small drops on buttered paper.

  2. Set aside 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. 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 that hardens into a brittle, glassy candy as it cools after being boiled down.
Lemon flavoring
Provides the lemon aroma and flavor that defines the candy.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it cracks in water. Boiling drives off water until the sugar concentration is high enough to set hard when cooled. Stopping early leaves a soft, sticky candy that will not hold its shape.

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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