Skip to main content
Dessert

Peppermint Drops

A simple peppermint‑flavored sugar candy made by mixing powdered sugar, lemon juice, and peppermint oil, then drying and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and peppermint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,583 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Peppermint Drops

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Sift the powdered sugar into a bowl.

  2. Add lemon juice until the mixture is thick.

  3. Stir in the oil of peppermint.

Dry and shape

  1. Dry the mixture over low heat for a few minutes.

  2. Drop spoonfuls onto white paper and let them 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 + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Powdered loaf sugar
Provides the sweet, bulk base that the drops are built from.
Lemon juice
Moistens the sugar into a thick paste that can hold its shape.
Oil of peppermint
Supplies the strong peppermint flavour throughout the drops.

The step that matters

Dry the mixture over low heat. Gentle heat drives off moisture so the paste sets into firm drops rather than staying soft or sticky. Too much heat can melt the sugar or brown it, changing the flavour and texture.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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.

More peppermint drops recipes

Lemon 4 See all 70 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes