Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Peppermints

Chocolate peppermint treats made from stiffened egg white, confectioners' sugar, peppermint extract, and coated in melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Peppermints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the centres

  1. Beat the egg white until very stiff.

  2. Stir in enough confectioners' sugar until the mixture is very thick.

  3. Flavor with a few drops of peppermint or wintergreen extract.

  4. Mold the mixture with your fingers into small, flat cakes and place them on sheets of oiled paper.

Coat and harden

  1. Melt the chocolate.

  2. Using a fork, take up the cream cakes and pour the melted chocolate over them with a spoon.

  3. Return the chocolate-covered cakes to the oiled paper to harden.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Peppermint + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. 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

Egg white
Whipped to a stiff foam, it gives the centres their light, airy structure.
Confectioners' sugar
Stiffens the whipped white into a thick, moldable mixture that holds its shape.
Baker's chocolate
Melted and poured over the centres, it forms a firm, glossy shell once cooled.

The step that matters

Stirring in the confectioners' sugar. Sugar must be added until the mixture is thick enough to hold its shape when molded. Too little leaves the cakes soft and sticky, while too much makes them dry and crumbly.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes