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Dessert

Acid Drops

Acid Drops are a sweet, sour candy made from sugar, water, lemon essence, and tartaric acid.

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

Acid Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it caramelizes.

  2. Add a few drops of essence of lemon.

  3. Pour the hot mixture onto an oiled marble slab.

  4. Sprinkle powdered tartaric acid on top and work it in.

Shape the drops

  1. Oil a tin sheet and place the sugar on it in a warm area.

  2. Cut a small piece of sugar and roll it into a round pipe.

  3. Cut the pipe into small pieces the size of drops using scissors.

  4. Roll the pieces under your hand and mix with fine powdered sugar.

Finish and store

  1. Sift the drops from the powdered sugar and store in boxes.

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 hard, glassy candy base once boiled and cooled.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the boiled sugar smooth and prevents crystallization.
Powdered tartaric acid
Adds sharp sourness that gives the drops their tangy bite.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it caramelizes. Under-boiled sugar stays soft and sticky, while over-boiled sugar turns bitter and dark. Cream of tartar helps prevent grainy crystals, so the candy sets clear and hard.

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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