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Peppermint Creams

A sweet peppermint-flavored confection made from icing sugar, peppermint essence, egg white, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Peppermint Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a basin, mix icing sugar, peppermint essence, and egg white.

  2. Add cold water gradually to form a paste.

Shape the creams

  1. Roll out the paste very thin.

  2. Cut into lozenges using a small round cutter.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peppermint + eggtop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together850 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, and its fine particles dissolve into the paste to give body.
Egg white
Binds the sugar together and helps the paste dry firm enough to hold its shape.
Peppermint essence
Gives the creams their mint aroma and flavour.
Cold water
Moistens the sugar so it forms a pliable paste that can be rolled.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water gradually. Icing sugar absorbs liquid at different rates. Adding water in small amounts lets the paste reach a smooth, pliable texture. Adding it all at once can make the paste sticky and too wet to roll thin.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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