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Dessert

Acid Drops and Tablets

A hard candy made from sugar, water, tartaric acid, and lemon flavoring, formed into drops or tablets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 and Tablets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a clean, bright pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add cream of tartar.

  4. Cover the pan.

  5. Boil for ten minutes.

  6. Remove the cover.

  7. Insert a thermometer.

  8. Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage.

Shape and finish

  1. Pour the mixture onto a clean, greased slab.

  2. Let the mixture cool until it is cool enough.

  3. Turn up the edges.

  4. Fold the mixture over.

  5. Add finely powdered tartaric acid.

  6. Add a few drops of lemon flavoring.

  7. Knead the mixture until stiff.

  8. Pass the mixture through drop or tablet rollers.

  9. Break the mixture into pieces when cold.

  10. Dust the pieces with powdered sugar.

  11. Weigh the pieces.

  12. Bottle the pieces.

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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, crystalline body of the drops once boiled to hard crack stage.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the drops smooth.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp sourness to the finished drops, balancing their sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage. Sugar must reach about 300°F (150°C) to set firm and brittle when cool. Underheating leaves the drops soft and sticky, while overheating causes bitter caramel notes.

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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