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Dessert

Lemon Drops

Lemon Drops are small, dry lemon‑flavored confections made by dropping a lemon‑sugar mixture onto paper and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon sugar

  1. Wash and dry the lemons.

  2. Rub the lemons on sugar and scrape the sugar off onto a sheet of paper until all the yellow is removed.

Make the drops

  1. In a basin, beat the egg whites with a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the lemon sugar and more powdered sugar until the mixture can drop without running.

  3. Add lemon juice to achieve desired acidity.

  4. Drop the mixture onto sheets of white paper in sizes similar to sixpences.

Dry and store

  1. Dry in a warm place or near the fire.

  2. Once dry, store in glasses or boxes in a dry place.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the drops their light, crisp structure as they dry.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, helping the mixture hold its shape without running.
Sugar
Absorbs the lemon oil from the skins, carrying the lemon aroma into the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar until the mixture can drop without running. Egg white foam is fragile and loses air if overmixed or overloaded with sugar. Adding sugar slowly keeps it stiff enough to hold a drop shape, so the drops dry crisp rather than spreading flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

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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