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Cream Peppermint Candy

A hard peppermint candy made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar, then adding peppermint oil and beating until it creams.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Peppermint Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix sugar, hot water, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture hard for 10 minutes without stirring.

  3. Remove from heat and add oil of peppermint.

  4. Beat the mixture until it creams and can drop onto paper.

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. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides the sweetness and the bulk that sets into the candy's firm body.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing too early, keeping the texture smooth.
Oil of peppermint
Gives the candy its minty flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger sugar crystals to form, which makes the finished candy grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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