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Dessert

Chocolate Peppermints

A candy made by boiling sugar and water, adding peppermint extract, cooling, forming drops, and dipping in chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Peppermints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Combine sugar and water in a pan.

  2. Boil hard for 3 minutes without stirring.

Flavour and shape

  1. Remove from heat and add peppermint extract.

  2. Place the mixture in a dish of cold water and beat until it begins to thicken.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto greased paper quickly.

Dip and finish

  1. Once cool, dip a few in melted sweet chocolate and place back on greased paper to cool again.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Peppermint + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Granulated sugar
Forms the sweet syrup base that sets into firm peppermint candy as it cools.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup without burning at once.
Sweet chocolate
Adds a rich coating that contrasts with the cool, sugary centre.

The step that matters

Boil hard for 3 minutes without stirring. Boiling the syrup to the right concentration determines how firmly the peppermints set. Stirring can encourage sugar crystals to form, which makes the texture grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate. 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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