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Dessert

Ginger Drops

A sweet candy made from almonds, candied citron, sugar, ginger, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the paste

  1. Finely grind the almonds and candied citron or orange peel together.

  2. Add a little sugar and continue to grind until it forms a fine paste.

Make the drops

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pound of sugar with a little water and heat.

  2. Skim off any impurities and add the ginger paste.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches candy height, then drop it onto parchment paper to cool.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Almond + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that sets into a crisp, sweet candy when cooled.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty richness to the paste that is folded into the candy.
Pounded ginger
Provides the warm, sharp aroma that defines the drops.

The step that matters

Boiling to candy height. Sugar syrup sets according to its temperature. If it is boiled too little, the drops stay soft and sticky; if boiled too long, they turn hard, brittle, or bitter from over-caramelising. Reaching the right stage is what gives the drops their set.

“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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