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Peppermint Drops

A hard candy made by boiling sugar with water, cream of tartar, and peppermint oil.

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 ↓

Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

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

  2. Remove from heat and add cream of tartar; mix well.

Flavour and drop

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

  2. Quickly drop the mixture onto white paper.

  3. If the mixture hardens before dropping, add a little water and boil for one to two minutes.

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

Sugar
Forms the sweet candy base that sets as it cools and hardens.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallisation for a smoother, less grainy candy.
Oil of peppermint
Provides the characteristic peppermint aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Beat until the mixture whitens, then drop quickly. As the sugar syrup cools, it begins to crystallise and harden. Beating incorporates air and turns the mass opaque, so it must be dropped promptly before it sets in the pan or bowl.

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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