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Dessert

Lemon and Acid Drops

A sugar candy made with lemon essence, cream of tartar, and tartaric acid, formed into thin rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon and Acid Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sweet base

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and cream of tartar together until the mixture turns pale yellow.

  2. Add essence of lemon to taste and pour the mixture onto an oiled slab.

  3. Sprinkle the tartaric acid on top and work it in well.

Shape and finish

  1. Once cool enough to handle, form into thin rolls and cut short pieces with scissors.

  2. Roll each piece into shape under your hand.

  3. Coat with sifted sugar, dry well, and store in an airtight tin.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the sweet, crisp candy body as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Helps prevent crystallisation, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, sour taste that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar mixture until pale yellow. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into a hard, brittle candy. Stopping too early leaves it sticky, while overcooking gives a bitter, burnt flavour and darker colour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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