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Dessert

After Dinner Mints

A mint-flavored candy made by boiling sugar, water, gum arabic, and peppermint essence.

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 ↓

After Dinner Mints

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve gum arabic in water.

  2. Add cream of tartar and bring to a boil until it forms a ball in water.

  3. Stir in peppermint essence.

Cool and pull

  1. Pour mixture onto a marble slab and let cool until manageable.

  2. Pull the mixture until it turns creamy white.

Shape and set

  1. Form into even sticks and mark sections with a silver knife.

  2. Store in a box for 1-2 days until creamy and easily separable at the marked sections.

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the main body of the mints and provides their sweetness and set once cooled.
Gum arabic
Stabilizes the syrup and helps keep sugar from crystallizing, giving a smooth texture.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps prevent large sugar crystals, keeping the mints smooth.
Peppermint essence
Provides the characteristic minty aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling to the ball stage. The syrup must reach the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves the mints soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes them hard and brittle once cooled and pulled.

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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