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Dessert

Sugar Drops

A small sweet made from butter, sugar, eggs, flour, nutmeg, topped with sugar plums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sugar Drops

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sugar Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and powdered sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sifted flour and grated nutmeg.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered plates, spacing them several inches apart.

  2. Sprinkle small sugar plums on top.

  3. Bake immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the drops together as they bake.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Once the batter is mixed, the leavening and moisture begin working right away, and letting it rest can make the drops spread unevenly or bake up dense. Spacing the drops apart also keeps them from merging as they spread.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, nutmeg. 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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