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Dessert

Ginger Drops

A candied ginger drop made from candied orange, sugar, ginger powder, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ginger Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the candied orange in a mortar with a little sugar to form a paste.

  2. Mix the white ginger powder with the loaf sugar.

  3. Wet the sugar with a little water.

Cook and dry

  1. Boil the mixture to a candy.

  2. Drop the candy onto sheets of paper the size of mint drops.

  3. Allow to dry in a dry room.

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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Fresh candied orange
Adds its citrus-sweet aroma and flavour to the paste that is mixed into the candy.
Loaf sugar
Provides the sweetness and, once boiled, sets into a hard, glassy drop as it cools.
White ginger powder
Contributes warm, spicy ginger aroma and flavour throughout the drops.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture to a candy. Sugar must be cooked long enough to lose enough water so the drops set firm and hard when cool. Undercooked sugar stays sticky, while overcooked sugar can scorch and taste bitter.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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