Skip to main content
Dessert

Peppermint Drops

A simple peppermint‑flavored sugar candy made by boiling powdered sugar with water, cream of tartar, and peppermint oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Moisten the powdered sugar with boiling water and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add the cream of tartar, mixing well.

  3. Add the oil of peppermint and beat briskly until the mixture whitens.

  4. Drop spoonfuls onto 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + pepperminttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together632 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. 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

Powdered sugar
Forms the body of the candy and provides its sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallizing too coarsely, giving a smoother texture.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the strong minty aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Beat briskly until the mixture whitens. As the cooked sugar mixture cools and is beaten, it turns opaque and begins to set. Stopping too early leaves a glossy, runny mixture that spreads instead of holding its shape when dropped.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe 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.

More peppermint drops recipes

Lemon 4 See all 70 →

You might also like

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