Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Peppermints

A candy made by boiling sugar and water, adding peppermint oil, and shaping into small balls.

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

Why it works: Sugar and peppermint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,082 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Peppermints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the 'hairs' stage, then remove from heat.

Flavor and shape

  1. Add the oil of peppermint and stir rapidly and constantly as it cools until creamy.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls and shape them into peppermints.

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 + 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy's sweet base and sets firm as the syrup cools.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the mint aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir rapidly and constantly as the mixture cools. As the boiled sugar syrup cools, constant stirring keeps sugar crystals small and even. Stirring stops the mixture from setting into large, grainy crystals, so it turns creamy and can be shaped before it hardens.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes