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Dessert

After Dinner Mints

A hard candy made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, and peppermint extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

After Dinner Mints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil rapidly until the mixture forms a ball when dropped into cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and pour onto an ungreased plate.

Shape the mints

  1. Add peppermint extract and let it stand until little blisters form on top.

  2. Stir with a paddle until it begins to harden, then shape as desired.

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

White sugar
Forms the crystalline candy base that sets firm as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidity helps prevent the sugar from crystallising into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly until the mixture forms a ball when dropped into cold water. Sugar concentration determines firmness once cooled. Stopping too early leaves mints soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes them hard and brittle. The cold-water test checks that the syrup has reached the right stage.

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.

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